


at the end of everything, hold on to anything

by hovercraft



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Character Death, Fade to Black, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rivals to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hovercraft/pseuds/hovercraft
Summary: The deeper the bond, the better you fight, and though these two might not have had the bond of siblings or closest friends, they did have one thing in common: the Kaiju took someone special from them. That meant cooperating to take each and every one down.(Pacific Rim AU)
Relationships: Brynhildr | Lancer/Sigurd | Saber, Gilgamesh | Archer/Arthur Pendragon | Saber, Romani Archaman/Merlin | Caster
Comments: 50
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you can forgive me for using the NitW tagline as a title on a Pacific Rim AU Fate fanfiction. (what a fucking mouthful)
> 
> Anyway, I wanted to make this for me so I wrote it. I have no idea how long it's going to be but knowing me, it'll probably be a monster.

_5 minutes until the drop._

The sound of whirring and clicking machinery all around them, piercing in tone, was white noise for Arthur Pendragon and his copilot, Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh would insist Arthur was the copilot, not the other way around.

Pilots Okita Souji and Oda Nobunaga over in Japan had bagged their sixth kill just a month ago. Arthur recalled vaguely the bragging voicemail that Nobu left him in a thick accent just before they two girls went on primetime television to be interviewed. ‘Beat us to the next one, I dare you!’ Arthur was from the Atlantic, but he found himself on the coast of the Pacific as one of the few people in the world who had drift compatibility with about anyone. A quirk, Gilles had said, that few people possessed, and how remarkable it would be to examine his brain! Arthur dismissed the creepy comment with a laugh and went about his way. It didn’t matter that he could drift with most people—what mattered was that his sister was the only person he’d want to drift with.

She was gone, and he’d been assigned to Gilgamesh.

As their armor was bolted to their bodies, the Excalibur Gold was just warming up. Their Jaeger had once been his and Artoria’s—Gilgamesh’s previous jaeger had been too damaged after its last fight to salvage. Arthur knew better than to ask because he’d been inside Gilgamesh’s head before and knew the tragedy like it had happened to him. Just the same as Gilgamesh saw Artoria for the hero she was, and didn’t mock her memory around Arthur—an unusual thing for Gilgamesh to do, all things considered.

As they put on their helmets, fluid draining from them as they finally took breaths, they stepped into the head of Excalibur Gold, feeling the metal of their boots link with the platform below them.

“How are you feeling?” A sing-song voice came in over the communicator. Arthur answered it first.

“Ready for the drop, Merlin.”

“Mm-hm, and what about Gilgamesh?”

“Do I even need to say it?”

“Protocol says yes. Besides, do you want to be so grumpy before a fight?”

“Hmph.”

“… he’s ready too,” Arthur said, finally.

“Engaging drop, then.”

The two men braced themselves for the controlled fall down the shaft onto the Jaeger, everything locking into place. Merlin and Siduri were talking about the neural handshake over the communicator as Gilgamesh looked over at Arthur. Even when their minds were about to become one, Gilgamesh couldn’t help but pester him.

“Don’t feel so flattered that you can drift with me. It’s your gift, after all.”

Arthur cleared his throat. “Just want to get the job done, Gil. That’s how it always is.”

The deeper the bond, the better you fight, and though these two might not have had the bond of siblings or closest friends, they did have one thing in common: the Kaiju took someone special from them. That meant cooperating to take each and every one down.

There was always banter like this every time before the neural handshake, and even as it ticked down, Arthur had to brace himself to get inside Gilgamesh’s head. The egotist he was, getting through his mind was harder than most, and buried within it was a lot of pain. He hadn’t chased the white rabbit yet, but there was always the nagging temptation. As the neural handshake engaged, Arthur cleared his mind. Just focus on the mission ahead. Kaiju, codename Juggernaut. Level 3. Located off the coast of Northern California.

The name was foreboding enough, but as he shook off the afterthoughts from the neural handshake, it was going to be smooth sailing from there. Even as they waded Excalibur Gold out into the middle of the ocean, charging the warpath to the beast on the radar, Arthur couldn’t help but listen to the voice in the back of his head.

_‘You’re not worthy to stand where they stood.’_

Gilgamesh knew he could hear it, and Arthur didn’t comment on it. The worst thing you could do in the cockpit was getting into a fight. As Juggernaut reared its massive, hideous head from the ocean, all thoughts of animosity between them dissolved into one focused will of fighting. They were unbeatable together, if only because they would never let themselves lose again. If only because they fought like they no longer had anything to lose.

They’d be welcomed back as heroes once the beast was confirmed dead, scavengers already heading out to sea to snag as many kaiju parts to sell on the black market before they’d even docked at the military facility. The press wanted to get at their throats, but the Jaeger program prized its pilots' wellbeing. As soon as they were out of their suits, Gilgamesh was down one hallway and Arthur was down the other, Arthur to his room and Gilgamesh to handle the press.

Merlin sipped his mug of coffee as he leaned against the command table, watching them go their separate ways.

“I’ve never seen two copilots who didn’t want to stay in the same room as one another,” He said to Siduri.

Her face was focused purely on her monitor, typing out orders to send. “Gilgamesh is hard to get along with, and Arthur is the only pilot who can handle him. It’s no wonder they have to wind down after working with one another.”

“I know, but usually, there’s some kind of bond _… something_ ,” Merlin vaguely gestured. “You’d think they hated one another.”

“They don’t. If Gilgamesh hated him, we couldn’t drag him to the cockpit. In fact, Gilgamesh probably thinks highly of him. It’s just…”

The two fell silent. Talking about lost pilots was always hard, and Artoria was a very painful memory for Merlin. Siduri gave a hand-wavey gesture before clicking her mouse again. It was Merlin’s cue to go bother someone else. He might have been a veteran of this program, but neither of them wanted to dwell on the past. In a burst of fake cheerful energy, he left the command room and felt someone bump into his waist.

“If it isn’t Abby!”

The daughter of a pilot who was currently out of commission, she had special permission to be on base. If Merlin was honest, he ran into her way more frequently because she tended to aimlessly wander, listening in curiously to important conversations until she was told to shoo. She was only … nine? Twelve? Merlin didn’t know. She looked up at him with a cheerful smile, a teddy bear underneath her arm.

“Have you seen Daddy?”

“He’s probably still in the infirmary, Abby.”

“He’s not! I looked everywhere.”

“Then he might be in the exam room. You’ll have to wait for him to come back.”

“…”

She fell silent at that. She didn’t like to be left on her own, and Merlin knew it. Sighing, he held out his hand for her, which she gratefully took. He knew she didn’t like being in the infirmary with all the other out of commission soldiers. He supposed it was his turn to babysit.

“We’ll find him. Come along.”

\--

Arthur just wanted to get some sleep.

This was their third kill as copilots, though the two had many more when they’d been working separately. He’d been up since 3 AM, and drifting took it _out_ of you. Your mind would work in overdrive, like a heated computer, controlling a massive mech that was linked to your body, your brain. The beds in the military base weren’t the best, but exhaustion was beginning to take him over anyway. As soon as he was past the point of drifting off, he heard his door open with a heavy clang.

“Leaving the wolves to me again, Pendragon?”

Gilgamesh leaned against the doorway, in a white shirt with metal dog tags hanging around his neck. Arthur sat up in a bit of a daze.

“You can handle that stuff better than I can. We’ve been up—”

“Since early morning. And yet, I can muster the energy to talk to the press. Why can’t you?”

“It takes a lot out of me, that’s all.”

“No, it doesn’t. You just flashback every time you’re in the cockpit.”

Arthur fell silent.

The rush of wind and water, the breach of the hull, Artoria being ripped from the cockpit—all in vivid HD in his mind, every time someone mentioned it for the past _two years_. They’d diagnosed him with PTSD, but it wasn’t enough to get him out of the program. His gift had been too valuable, and the shortage of pilots meant that they were pairing every spare they feasibly could.

“You make it very hard not to fall into your mind,” Gilgamesh said, accusatory. “Sometimes, I don’t think you’re fit for the task.”

Arthur glared in his direction, earning a scoff and a laugh from Gilgamesh. “Don’t worry. I’m not telling you to quit, even though any sane man would. You’re the second brain I need to pilot a Jaeger. I’m not letting go of you so easily.”

Gilgamesh was always like this. Acting like he was the only pilot in charge in Excalibur Gold, the one controlling all their movements when Arthur was still giving 110%. Sure, he was hard to keep up with. That didn’t make him the only pilot. Arthur laid back down in bed, opting to ignore Gilgamesh, who took that as an invitation to sit on the side of the bed and demand his attention.

“I booked us for an interview.”

“Mm? Why didn’t you ask me?”

“Because you were going to go whether you liked it or not. It’s for Bathory’s show.”

“Today?”

“Obviously not. This weekend.”

Arthur groaned softly. This man had no mercy for him, despite the obvious lack of any camaraderie between them. “Can you just let me sleep?”

“No,” Gilgamesh answered, simply. “We’re heroes. Kings among men. _They_ would’ve understood that. You think it’s enough to just protect people. You need to realize you’re a symbol for humanity, _my_ copilot, and step up to that plate.”

“I meant can you let me sleep _now_. I’ll be awake for the interview.”

Gilgamesh sighed and stood up off the bed. Dealing with Arthur was difficult. He’d flirted with him before their respective failures to keep their copilots alive, but now, it seemed like the spark had left Arthur entirely. Gilgamesh knew why. He’d been there himself, but he didn’t let despair crush him. Arthur was content to fight and let that be his legacy. There was so much more to the world than that. Would Artoria be happy to see him only surviving instead of thriving?

He almost said it, but Arthur was wasting his time. He needed to go get ready, and possibly get some food in him.

Arthur rolled over again in bed, trying not to stay stuck on his flashback and repeating words to himself to try to get his thoughts rolling onto something else. Anything. Anything that would let him sleep.

\--

Elisabeth Bathory was one of the biggest TV show hosts in America, and being a repeat guest was something of an honor. Arthur, in his military best, let people backstage put light makeup on him as Gilgamesh went over the talking points during a commercial break. Arthur was good at this—faking it. He was really, really good at faking being fine, being charming, because he had a lot of practice being both before Ar—don’t think about it, don’t think about it. As they were lead out into red velvet chairs beside Elisabeth’s desk, Arthur put on his best smile and tried to ignore the flashes of cameras as he waved to the audience.

Gilgamesh and Arthur were _popular_. They were two handsome young pilots whose faces sold posters like hotcakes. If it weren’t for the privacy of the military base, Arthur wasn’t sure he’d ever get a moment’s rest. He’d even posed for a charity calendar dedicated to helping victims of Kaiju attacks, and he heard it sold over a million copies, even in different countries. Their tragic backstories only helped—Gilgamesh losing Enkidu after getting injured and barely making it back to base before they died, and Arthur… losing Artoria while they were in the middle of a neural handshake. They were the subject of rampant twitter discussion, forum debate, and multitudinous fanfiction.

Elisabeth lead the discussion with Gilgamesh, mostly, and Arthur was grateful for it. Just smile, look forward, and answer as best you can. She talked about Juggernaut, made fun of how popular they were for being pretty boys, flirted a little with both of them, and mercifully, stayed off the topic of their copilots.

“Arthur…” Elisabeth had suddenly turned the attention his way.

“Oh, ah—yes?”

“What would you say the hardest part about saving the world is?”

“Knowing you can’t save everyone.”

The words slipped out of his mouth and the audience went silent for a moment. Damn it! He should have said something that ribbed his copilot or something witty or charming like that. Instead, he has everyone’s eyes on him, thinking _about that_.

_(The sheer amount of space the Incident took up in his mind on any given day was enough to fill a terabyte.)_

“But, you know, sometimes it’s getting into Gilgamesh’s head,” Arthur tried to save it, and to his relief, the audience laughed. Gil glanced his way before coming up with a playful retort and the interview moved on smoothly. Arthur was flushed with embarrassment, showing off that vulnerable side for a moment when he should be better than this. Was he slipping?

After the interview concluded and they were back at the base, Gilgamesh looked at him with a thoroughly unimpressed glance.

“You need to get it together. It’s not enough that you can go autopilot in the cockpit. You need to be better.”

For once, Arthur snapped back. “You know exactly what I went through, and you want me to just… be _better_? We are not rockstars, Gil! We’re Jaeger pilots! We’re not here to entertain people!”

“You are humanity’s last stand against something _no one_ can comprehend,” Gilgamesh’s voice teetered on dangerous. “If you want to keep piloting with me, you will at least _act_ like you can handle the job.”

Arthur wanted to punch him, he really did. He went through the same thing as he did, and saw what went down in his brain every single time they drifted. Arthur never dared bring up Enkidu, so why did Gilgamesh feel so comfortable picking out Arthur’s shortcomings? Maybe he had a point, Arthur thought resignedly. Maybe the memories were getting in the way of work, and he couldn’t let that happen.

“How do you handle it?” Arthur asked. “Day in, day out… your worst memory.”

Gilgamesh paused before answering. “Every time it comes back to me, I ask myself if that’s how they would want me to remember them. Then I keep going.”

It was advice Arthur would have to take sooner or later, taking off his military hat and holding it at his side, sighing, and trying to get a grip. Eventually, after Gilgamesh left, someone came up behind him and patted his shoulder, causing him to jolt.

“Easy!” Merlin said. “Easy, it’s just me.”

“Merlin… what do you want?”

“Just checking up on my favorite pilot. Saw your interview! You did well!”

Arthur was about to give a retort before realizing Merlin had a child with him.

“Abby… hey, how are you holding up, kid?” Arthur was so much better with children than he was with people like Merlin, so he crouched down to her level and smiled. Merlin took his ignoring him with grace.

“Umm…” Abby was predictably shy when it came to being face to face with a pilot. “I’m okay. Waiting to go see daddy.”

“I’ve been babysitting her the past few days,” Merlin said, proudly. “Her father had to undergo an operation, so we’re waiting for him to wake up.”

“Your daddy’s a good guy. I know him pretty well,” Arthur pat the top of her head before standing up. “Right—was there something you needed, Merlin?”

“Oh, no. Just… checking up on you.” It came with the implication that the interview looked a little worrisome from the outside, and Arthur brushed it off.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ve got a date with Romani tonight. Do you want to third wheel? You look like you need the distraction.”

“What? No, no. Go have fun, Merlin. If you managed to convince him to go out with you, you deserve to have fun on your own.”

Merlin shrugged and let Abby lead him off towards the infirmary, giving a short good-bye as he did. Arthur sighed. He shrugged off his military coat and hung it thoughtlessly on a nearby chair. He didn’t want to think about the interview or Gilgamesh or anything from today if he could help it. All he wanted to do was sleep.

It felt like he fell asleep just moments ago when the alarm came to life.

With blurry eyes, he checked the monitor. Category 3. “Scourge.”

_25 minutes until the drop._

That was unusual. Usually, they didn’t leave the breach this quickly apart. Maybe it was a freak incident—hopefully, it was just that.

Thinking he might finally get some sleep once this was all over, Arthur didn’t wait for someone to knock on the door. He tossed on a jacket, proudly displaying Excalibur Gold’s name and logo, and headed to meet Gilgamesh.


	2. Chapter 2

There was an unusual amount of quiet between kaiju attacks from then on after.

People started questioning if the forces beyond the breach were weakening, but consulting detective and freelance apocalypse-solver Sherlock Holmes and fellow scientist (ex-maths professor) James Moriarty disagreed. They justified the lull as research ongoing from the other side. Whatever the other side _was_. Both of them agreed that the kaiju attacks weren’t mindless—they were evolving to deal with jaegers. This ceasefire was anything but peaceful, with Kaiju attacks becoming more infrequent, and oddly, usually only category one or two. It was as if they were testing the waters with new equipment. These latest kaiju had ‘upgrades’—spitting acid, electric nodes on their backs, things that were designed to put down a jaeger permanently, and they were becoming hardier with each new one.

The wall program was still going—an ever-looming threat to the Jaeger program, but people were desperate for a solution that would last. Nobody wanted an ocean filled with kaiju roaming around, but it felt like the Jaegers were encouraging them. Romani Archaman had to deal with people all over the world day in, day out, trying to justify the cost and ongoing commitment to the Jaeger program. Right now, it was the last line of defense while the wall was being finished.

“We can’t justify closing down a program like—we have to shut the breach!” Romani hadn’t slept in ages and it was showing. Their little dinner date being thoroughly interrupted by work talk, Merlin had to try navigating talking about more pleasurable things. “We can’t just wall it all off and let kaiju roam the oceans forever. Can you imagine? All ship trade being cut off? We’d have to fly imports out between every country, the fishing industry would completely die off, making food shortages in coastal countries…”

“Mmhm…” Merlin let him rant. It was healthy for him to get this all out. Their fine dining was expensive—food shortages made finding a restaurant hard and getting into one harder, but the rich always found a way to keep their creature comforts. It was taking up half of Merlin’s paycheck, but if it got Romani into bed with him… if only to _sleep_ —

“The breach has to be closed. We just have to find a way in. Are you going to eat this? Because I haven’t eaten in—”

Merlin passed him the little woven basket of bread. “Not at all.”

It was kind of cute watching him tear into that tiny loaf of bread, a luxury they usually went without. Fish was pricey these days, for the reasons Romani had stated. Nonetheless, Merlin let him order whatever he wanted, promising to cover all of it. As Romani refused to separate work and his private life, he finally said, “I’m sorry, how have you been? You hear all of this day in, day out, and I never give you the time of day anymore…”

Merlin and Romani’s first meeting was curious. It was an immediate ‘let me bed you’ at first sight for Merlin and a pain in the ass for Romani. Merlin would act like Romani’s favorite idol over text as a way to cheer him up, and even knowing it was Merlin on the other side of the screen, Romani let the roleplay happen. Eventually, he ended up falling for him, not that he felt he could give much back. Work was eating them both alive.

“I’m fine, just wishing I could spend time with my favorite acting director, S—”

“Don’t call me that.” Romani held up a finger. “If anyone knew—”

“It’d be in the papers everywhere. You and I both lead double lives, it’s fine.”

As they finished their meal and headed outside, it began to pour rain. Romani let out a small sigh, extending his hand to feel the raindrops before Merlin produced an umbrella seemingly out of nowhere to hold in front of them.

“We’d better get back to the base…”

“Are you sure?” Merlin was one of the few people who had an apartment outside of the bunkers, for comfort’s sake. “They can handle having you away for one night.”

Romani gave him a tired look. This was the apocalypse they were talking about. He needed to be there. He needed…

… to sleep.

Romani slipped his hand behind Merlin’s neck and leaned up to kiss him, before bitterly looking away. “Just one night. And I want to spend most of it sleeping.”

“I promise, just one round! Maybe two, if you’re up for it.” Merlin was already more cheerful for getting his way.

“One round.”

\--

A month later, a Category Three would attack San Diego.

Meteor Tentyris, a second-generation Jaeger and its pilots, Ozymandias and Arash, took it down. Another pair of rock stars, well known for their technique of using whatever’s available nearby to crush kaiju. They had pulled a sunken ship out of the water this time around to beat down the beast. It was the talk of the world.

“So I took him home to Nefertari, and she approves,” Ozymandias was talking to Gilgamesh over a video call in his quarters. “We’ve been holding the coast for three years now, I basically know him like the back of my hand—”

“Never change, Ozymandias,” Gilgamesh laughed. One of his last real friends, the two spoke whenever they got the chance. Nonetheless, Ozymandias looked him over curiously, leaning back in his chair from the other side of the screen.

“How is Arthur?”

“He’s a mess,” Gilgamesh was nothing if not brutally honest. “He’s an expert pilot, but he’s always thinking about… his incident. I can handle him. It’s just seeing him act like this makes me wonder if he’ll really survive this war.”

“Some people find purpose once the fighting is over, and some people lose purpose once it’s gone,” Ozymandias said quietly. “Which do you think he is?”

“The latter. Once he feels he’s avenged his sister, I don’t know if he’ll have any clue what to do.”

“He sounds like he could use your help.”

Gilgamesh grimaced, somewhat annoyed. He knew all of Arthur’s memories—a goody-two-shoes on the outside, but he used to be kind of a prick before his sister died. Headstrong and thinks he knows what’s best for himself and everyone else. She kept him in line and losing her humbled him. Gilgamesh had lost Enkidu in the worst way possible, rivaling that of Arturia’s sudden disconnection. He had been in their mind while they died, he felt their senses leave them one by one. Some said it was a miracle Gilgamesh survived on his own to suffer someone else’s death in his mind. In this way, he understood Arthur but couldn’t quite relate to him.

“Arthur could use a lot of people’s help. He’s messy, he craves any distraction and when he doesn’t have it, he tries sleeping it off. He’s not quite a shell of his former self, but he’s certainly hollow in places.”

“But you wouldn’t pilot with him if you didn’t respect him.”

“Of course not. He’s a great pilot, and I need the extra mind.”

“So… maybe it’d be good to get to know him.”

“I already _know him_ better than anyone.”

“You know what I mean!”

There was a knock at Gilgamesh’s door.

“I’ll have to talk to you later, Ozymandias.” He flicked the communicator off before sliding the heavy metal door open. His face immediately softened when he saw it was Siduri. Another friend.

“Gil, how are you feeling?”

“Good. Why?”

“Sherlock and Moriarty want a word with you. They want to talk about your latest kill.”

As they walked to the scientist’s quarters, a loud argument could be overheard.

“THAT WAS MY THEOREM!”

“I needed the space on the chalkboard. You should’ve written it down in your notes.”

“Listen—” Moriarty waved a dangerous finger in Sherlock’s face. “I don’t— _coke myself up_ into a frenzy and erase your work off the board, but you’re making a strong argument for an eye for an eye! Where do you even get drugs at the end of the world?!”

“A genius can acquire all of the tools he needs.” Sherlock blotted his nose as it bled. “Besides, your theory was wrong. Mine is correct.”

“You needed to see me?” Gilgamesh interrupted the two of them.

“Ah, yes!” Moriarty took Gilgamesh by the arm and dragged him to a tank. Gilgamesh recognized it immediately—it was a bone-plated thing he’d helped tear-off of a kaiju when it tried to electrocute them. It conducted electricity, something that had never been seen before.

“When you tore this off, how badly did it affect Excalibur Gold?”

“Our systems were shot for a moment. Excalibur Gold is digital, so—”

“Kaiju are _learning_. The first kaiju with this asset was a category two, easily taken down off the coast of Japan. However, the information still got passed beyond the breach, which leads to my theory that kaiju are evolving to match the strengths of a Jaeger. One that my dear rival over there has yet to refute.”

“There is no need to refute the truth,” Sherlock said, simply. “But it does leave us with a problem. We can’t build Jaegers fast enough to meet their evolutions head-on. We are reaching a breaking point, and humanity is on the losing side.”

“Right,” Moriarty coughed. “So what I brought you here for is this: on your next mission, if there’s anything like this—” He tapped the glass. “Any new evolution, I want you to bring it back intact for testing.”

“Feh. Hard to guarantee when you’re in the middle of a fight.”

“I still want you to try. Lives are on the line, after all! It would be a shame to have to go back to nuclear.”

“Is this all?” Gilgamesh’s eyes looked up at the enormous chalkboard that took up the entire wall. It was covered in scribbles of math and theoretical assumptions based on what they had already. It was chicken scratch to him, but to these two men, it was the key to ending the apocalypse.

“That’s all. Give Arthur my regards and tell him the same.”

What would it matter? Arthur would figure that out in the drift anyway.

Speaking of…

Where was he now? Sleeping? Probably sleeping. Gilgamesh decided to bother him, anyway. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he made his way back down the hallways, to the pilots’ rooms. These weren’t any nicer than the others, but they didn’t make them share rooms anymore. They could owe that to how many fewer pilots there were, now. Refusing to knock, Gilgamesh slid the door open to Arthur’s room, completely unannounced.

Arthur immediately jolted up from where he was washing his face in the sink after shaving. “Hey—”

“We have a new mission. Bring back any new kaiju ‘upgrades’ from now on.”

“… don’t they know how hard that would be?”

“I’m just relaying orders.” Gilgamesh invited himself into the room, smugly staring at Arthur, who was dressed down in a white shirt and combat pants. Gilgamesh prided himself on his style, and the black jacket and pants he was wearing were designer. It definitely cast a difference between the two of them.

“… is that all?”

‘Is that all’. Gilgamesh was already annoyed. “We’re co-pilots, Arthur. We might as well act like it.”

Arthur splashed his face with water before drying off and turning around to face him. “Act like it?”

“Every other set of pilots in the Jaeger program are like family. Or they’re married, or best friends, or something… I don’t want that out of you. I don’t expect it either. No one can replace our copilots, but some camaraderie wouldn’t kill you.”

Arthur glanced his way. Camaraderie was hard with Gilgamesh, especially with how bull-headed and bratty he could be, but Arthur was failing to take into account his own personality. He was obsessed with fighting, to the point it haunted him outside of the Jaeger.

“I don’t want to marry you,” Arthur said outright. Gilgamesh laughed.

“You have a sense of humor after all! At first, I thought that awkward banter on live television was all you could muster. I was hoping you weren’t as humorless as you seemed in your mind,” Gilgamesh crossed his arms. “I’ve never heard you laugh.”

“Not a lot makes me laugh, to be honest…”

“Really?”

“Really. Not even before…”

Arthur fell silent. Gilgamesh stared him down.

“Not all roads have to lead back to that train of thought.”

“I know, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t _apologize_. Seeing you get mad would be more entertaining.”

“I don’t exist to entertain you—” Arthur snapped back, and Gilgamesh grinned smugly at him.

“See? Like that. Nonetheless, we can work this out next time we drift. Though I hope that’s not all I see of you, Arthur.”

As Gilgamesh turned to leave, Arthur tossed his towel into the laundry bin and sighed, sitting down on his bed.

\--

It wasn’t like he didn’t want to make friends with Gil, it was just… hard.

Arthur saw how walled off he was in his own mind. That show Gilgamesh just made? About wanting camaraderie? He knew it was a lie. He was only asking so they could seem more normal. In reality? Gilgamesh didn’t consider anyone a friend, and he didn’t want to get close after losing the only person who mattered to him. If Arthur died in the cockpit, he wanted to be completely unaffected by it.

And it hurt because the feeling wasn’t mutual.

He liked Gilgamesh. He really did. He was brave and resourceful, and Gilgamesh must’ve seen it in his mind, or he wouldn’t remind him to try and be “friends” with him. They’d let these thoughts drift between them later. Their own silent arguments, trying to get one up on the other as they fought. Though they could understand one another, it was hard to relate.

Immediately after sorting through all of this in his head, the alarm went off and the doomsday clock was reset. Category 2. Codename: Clawripper. At least it wasn’t 3’s anymore, though he didn’t count on it staying this way.

It was their first deployment in a while. As they suited up, initiated the drop, started the neural handshake—Arthur briefly tried to take a glimpse to see if anything had changed within Gilgamesh’s mind, to see if his mind had changed about wanting to be friends—

It hadn’t. He was still as closed off within the drift as ever.

As they calibrated for the fight, Arthur decided to close off that part of himself as well.

\--

They were welcomed back in celebration. The fight hadn’t taken long at all, even if it had taken a lot out of them. Calls from all over the world poured in to congratulate them. After all, it was around this many kills that a Jaeger team revealed if they could push through this together or if they were destined to fall apart. For once, Arthur went with Gilgamesh to talk to the press. Holding his helmet beneath his arm, he tried his best to be articulate—Gilgamesh was just so much better with these people than he was.

When they were done, Arthur hesitated before following Gilgamesh back into the base.

“What’s keeping you?” Gilgamesh glanced back at him.

“You have to stop lying to me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“I mean, you can’t keep acting like you want to be friends with me. You don’t. You give me shit all the time for not getting past Arturia, but the truth is—”

“Finish that sentence,” Gilgamesh responded coldly. “I dare you.”

“The truth is, neither of us is past it. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but we can’t lie to ourselves and try to pretend to be—”

Gilgamesh pushed Arthur against a wall, hand splayed on the armor of his chest.

“Do you think I’m stupid? Of course, we aren’t _friends_ , Pendragon, but the suggestion is this: We either act like it and end the apocalypse or we stay like this, bickering and eventually dragging it into the drift where it can harm us and other people.”

Arthur’s steely gaze met his. He refused to back down. “I won’t bring this into the drift. I just want to know what your goal is.”

“To kill as many kaiju as I can get my hands on. There, mystery solved.” Gilgamesh let go of him, but Arthur followed him in pursuit.

“We’re not different in that respect—” People were beginning to stare. “We could _be_ friends, but right now, that’s impossible for you.”

Arthur was only annoying Gilgamesh at this point, but he pressed on. “I know I have to prove myself to you in order to ‘earn’ it. You practically scream how unworthy I am in your head, all the time.”

“That’s because no one can stand where they stood.”

“I’m not asking! You can’t replace Arturia either. All I’m saying is, we can do better than fake it.”

Gilgamesh glowered at him over his shoulder. Really, Arthur could be so impertinent when he already knew what was going on in his mind. Their goals were at odds; Gilgamesh wanted them to fake civility in order to fight better, and Arthur… wanted to feel like how he used to, before everything happened. Gilgamesh refused to be used that way. Neither of them wanted ‘replacements’, and he’d just have to get used to it.

“Then _earn_ it.”

Arthur slowed to a stop as Gilgamesh walked off. What an asshole—saying they should be friends one moment, then denying anything of the sort should ever happen the next. He was hard to read even being inside his head.

They couldn’t stop the apocalypse like this. At each other’s throats for not living up to expectations whenever the subject came up. Arthur’s hands balled into fists before he relaxed and let go.

He just wished that having the same goal didn’t have to be so damn complicated.


	3. Chapter 3

**2019, Coast of Hong Kong**

_Brynhildr and her husband, Sigurd, had been holding the coastline for six years._

_They were peerless. Many pilots died in the line of duty when one was in the business of fighting Kaiju this long, but the only thing stronger than a long line of monsters was the love they had for one another. Their Mark-I Jaeger, Volsung Romantia, had endured beating after beating, but despite its age, was peerless in its class. Perhaps because it had been built at the peak of research, it was experimental in nature, lightweight, with a focus on melee as opposed to long-range weaponry._

_You would never guess Brynhildr to be a pilot outside of the cockpit. Soft-spoken and rarely leaving her husband’s side, you would never guess she was the more violent of the two, either._

_Excalibur Gold had fallen recently in battle._

_It was the talk of the world—the two Pendragon siblings ripped apart in the cockpit while in the drift. Though it wasn’t the first time it had happened to a pair of pilots, the damage it could do to someone’s psyche was immeasurable. That was why Brynhildr found her way to Arthur’s side as soon as the doctors gave her clearance to see him. An old friend. Sigurd, who didn’t know him as well, waited outside the hospital room as his wife went in with flowers. Her brows furrowed and a soft ‘oh…’ escaped her lips as she saw him sitting up in bed, nodes attached to his body monitoring his vital signs. There were already flowers everywhere. She had no choice but to put hers on the floor._

_“Arthur…”_

_It was her worst nightmare come true for Arthur, one she could never imagine happening to herself. She empathetically put her hand over his, and Arthur didn’t look her way. He was completely despondent. Just days ago, he’d lost everything he was fighting for, and his commander still wanted him to keep on fighting after recovering. The demands of the jaeger program were absolute. No pilot could be spared as long as they could get back up again—though that remained to be seen for Arthur._

_She talked about what was going on back at the base, quietly, hoping she could provide some distraction to ease his troubled mind. It quickly devolved into “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…” though, and Arthur shook his head._

_“Don’t apologize.”_

_It was the first thing he’d said all day. Sigurd and Brynhildr were the crew sent in to finish off the kaiju that had nearly done him in. They were too young of pilots to handle such a big kill. Their commander should have never sent them in, she thought. It was too late to say anything, though, and as much regret as they shared, it wasn’t going to help them now._

_“What will you do?” Bryn asked, tentatively._

_“… what she would’ve wanted.”_

\--

**Present Day, Northern California**

Moriarty was staring at the board on the wall with a frustrated, in-the-middle-of-a-roadblock look. He could calculate the rate at which Kaiju would emerge from the drift, he could even determine the category in some cases. He knew his studies were on par with whatever lurked outside of the breach, but he needed to know more.

He was a black market kaiju salesman before the famous _Romani Archaman_ recruited him. He wanted to know what was in it for him. Romani struck a deal that, in exchange for his expertise on base, he would be given a full pardon for his past crimes. Not one to turn down a good deal, Moriarty accepted and met his long-time enemy, Sherlock Holmes, as a colleague. Drift technology between human brains and kaiju were only in their beginning stages. At first, no one was too certain they had brains that could be comparable to human ones at all, but he was proud to make the discovery himself. They functioned similarly, too, whenever he got his hands on a barely living one. Much like the Jaegers, they functioned with two brains.

It almost felt like proof of intelligent design, but that was neither here nor there.

That meant a drift was possible. It was just up to Holmes to build the technology along with fellow researcher Da Vinci. And then make Holmes do the drift himself, as Moriarty had a daughter to take care of and wasn’t keen on frying his brain.

“If we just knew why they were here…”

There were several natural theories. One was for the Earth’s resources. Others ranged as far out as ‘a cataclysmic race of beings that existed solely to destroy and stumbled their way haphazardly into the breach’, but with the intelligent, evolving race learning how to combat Jaegers efficiently, that theory was losing less and less traction. Moriarty prided himself on being right, and his theory was as follows:

The Kaiju had been here before. Perhaps when the Earth wasn’t viable yet, and they opened the breach before humans would ever notice it—or perhaps even non-humans who hadn’t yet evolved. For whatever reason, it was only recently that kaiju could emerge. Any sort of reason would suffice, but climate change and fossil fuels were the most likely culprit, as they had the most rapid effect on the planet. If his theory was correct, humans had essentially terraformed the planet for an alien race, but the kaiju themselves… that was something he couldn’t quite understand.

Holmes had a hunch.

He posited that the kaiju weren’t a part of the alien race looking to inhabit the earth at all, but rather, weapons of mass destruction that were meant to kill off the living population—a deduction based on one simple thing: that is all that the kaiju exist to _do_. They never exhibit any other behaviors beyond wanton destruction.

These were all just guesses, and the truth wouldn’t be revealed until they got into one’s mind. Da Vinci was tinkering with a drifting device as an alien-looking mass of meat floated in a tank nearby.

“How are you doing?”

“As well as one can be at the end of the world, trying to figure out how to drift with an alien brain—” Lighting up a blowtorch, she began to connect more pieces, humming cheerfully to herself. “But it’s nothing too hard for me! Imagine, being born in the same era as the apocalypse and being handed the chance to stop it!”

“Yay… a dream come true,” Moriarty said ruefully, turning around in his chair.

“Come on, you have to think it’s a little exciting!”

“Thinking I’m the only thing between a meathead military and globe-destroying monsters? It’s a wonder I haven’t had a heart attack yet. My astoundingly good health must be to thank.”

“What do you think of Clawripper?”

“Meh… taken down too quickly to study, and in the middle of the ocean, too. Means the parts are harder to harvest.”

“You never stop thinking like a businessman, do you?”

“Everyone stop everything and stop talking,” Sherlock announced suddenly, brusquely charging into the room with a box he dropped off on the table.

“Well, now I just want to talk even more.”

Sherlock held up a finger to Moriarty, who found it criminally insulting. He immediately began to unpack the box in front of him, and as the two other scientists looked on in amazement.

“May I present, the original build of drift technology.”

It wasn’t old looking at all, considering they were over ten years into the apocalypse, but the bulky machinery was responsible for all the research they had today—and it held a very unique property: it had been built with the intent of using just one mind to control the jaeger, meaning it was a one-way connection.

“We can use this to drift with a kaiju brain, provided Da Vinci has been working on her end of the bargain—”

“It’s almost done,” She said, cheerfully, looking over the machinery like a lost treasure.

“—provided we actually find a living brain.”

Moriarty was silent for a few moments. No one had ever been successful in bringing in a Kaiju alive. They were the size of cities, for god’s sake.

“We’ll manage. The world depends on it, after all.”

\--

Gilgamesh had been harsh on Arthur, and he knew it. His mouth would say words he entirely meant but didn’t mean to say before he could stop it because he was stubborn enough to assert himself when it wasn’t necessary. They could easily overcome this roadblock with a single conversation, but that involved Gilgamesh doing something he utterly despised; becoming vulnerable for someone else’s sake, so he did the next best thing.

He called him to a sparring match.

It would do Arthur some good to get him out of his room, and Arthur knew better than to show him up. Two wooden poles leaned against the wall, Gilgamesh grabbing both and tossing one to Arthur. They’d done this song and dance before, once to prove they were compatible when Arthur had been discharged from the hospital.

Arthur had leaped back into the fray almost immediately, trying out new pilots as soon as he could find them. Gilgamesh had been out of the game for about six months before rejoining the program. Romani had an eye for their fighting style and put them together out of curiosity. It was hard finding someone who could work with Gilgamesh, of all people, who was uniquely talented with few people keeping up with him.

As Arthur took his stance opposite of Gilgamesh, he cleared his mind of all thoughts. The sound of wood clacking against wood rang out through the entire room, Gilgamesh on the offensive as Arthur blocked every single blow. Soon, the tides were turned against him, Arthur aggressively moving up and pressing Gilgamesh backward. They were perfectly matched, and no matter how many times they tried to sweep the other one into falling or hitting a weak spot, it was like they were in the drift already—completely compatible with each other’s movements as if they knew what the other would do next.

Arthur knew Gilgamesh favored his right side and would come in from the left. Gilgamesh knew about Arthur’s weak ankle from the accident and tried to target it multiple times. Each blow deflected came from intimately knowing one another through their memories, and in this, they could see why they drifted so easily; neither Gilgamesh or Arthur cared what one another saw in the drift. Intimate, painful memories were forfeit in the face of their common enemy. Nor were either petty enough to bring up what they saw in the drift outside of it.

Gilgamesh eventually had him pinned, not through any weakness on Arthur’s part, but through using a cheap distraction when someone had opened the door inside. It was a hollow victory, but Gilgamesh would take it any day over losing.

As Arthur’s back hit the mat beneath them, Gilgamesh pointed the pole at his neck before tilting his chin upward with it.

“… good,” It didn’t sound congratulatory from Gilgamesh at all, just a mere acknowledgment that Arthur was still keeping up with him. “I’d accept nothing less.”

There was Gil’s problem, his tolerance and respect for Arthur being solely for the sake of his competency. He tossed a soda at Arthur, pilfered from the cafeteria. It was his favorite, and he likely didn’t pick it because of that, but because being in the drift was so intimate that you knew one another like the back of your hand. Arthur would have likely done the same, not as a favor, but as an afterthought, as if picking the wrong thing would be a _deliberate_ choice.

“You did good, too.”

“I know.”

For a moment, things were awkwardly quiet between them. Gilgamesh said earn it, but hadn’t Arthur fought for the sake of the world at his side? What on earth would he have to do to earn his trust? With a soft hiss, Arthur cracked open the soda and tipped it to his lips.

“They want us to bring back a kaiju brain,” Arthur said, suddenly.

“Do they want us to fight on land, or drag a carcass out from the middle of the ocean?” Gilgamesh laughed derisively, elbows resting on his knees as they sat next to each other. Fighting on land meant property damage beyond repair and human lives at risk, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Fighting in the ocean was safer, and as far as you could go off the coast, the better you were.

“Apparently they want to drift with a kaiju brain.”

“Disgusting.”

“At least they’re not making us do it.”

This petty small talk was avoiding the real topic they wanted to discuss. Arthur looked beside him in contemplation without realizing that doing so was—well, staring. Gilgamesh had a muscular body in a lithe package, red tattoos that peeked out from beneath his shirt. Arthur had been slacking off in his exercise, doing it only a couple times a week compared to Gilgamesh’s six days a week. He was no slouch, but Gilgamesh made it look like an art form.

He looked nice. Too bad it didn’t match his personality one bit. Arthur finally tore his eyes off of him to stare aimlessly forward.

“Do you think they’ll figure out how to do it? Close the breach?” He asked.

“I’m not stopping until they do.”

“Me either.”

“Then we’ll be stuck together for a while,” Gilgamesh said it sulkily. He couldn’t boss Arthur around, nor could he drift with anyone else. It made him feel like he didn’t have the upper hand. It was hard to come up with questions that he didn’t already know the answer to, but Gilgamesh managed.

“When Arturia died…”

“…?” Arthur felt that sudden wince, the flashback to the memory itself, but pushed it down as soon as he could.

“You were ripped from her immediately and had to pilot the jaeger alone back to the coast or drown.”

“Yeah.”

“And you know I was in the jaeger with E—my copilot as they died slowly.”

“Of course.”

“Which do you think is worse?”

Arthur knew it was a loaded question and had several wrong answers. “Both are pretty terrible. I don’t want to compare the two. We’ve both… seen each other’s way of dealing with it.”

“Hm.”

Not wrong, but not right either. Arthur wouldn’t downplay Arturia’s death for Gilgamesh’s sake, and he respected that. They needed to find a new subject—something, anything to talk about.

“What do you do to get rid of stress, Arthur?”

“Sleep, mostly. It’s the only way.”

“No, no, that pushes stress down for you to deal with when you’re awake. I mean something that relieves you of your thoughts rather than pushes them away.”

“… if you have a cure, I’d like to hear it—”

“I favor intimacy.” (Arthur knew this already; that Gilgamesh slept with people outside of the base from time to time but let him continue.) “Having someone there as a distraction does wonders.”

“I’m afraid I’m not that kind of person. Not that it shouldn’t work for you.”

Gilgamesh looked at Arthur as if he wanted to say something, like he really wanted to suggest something he shouldn’t, and decided not to. “Hmph. Think you’re better than me?”

“You know I don’t think that at all.”

“You’re lucky I have proof you don’t. Let’s hit the showers, I’m done working up a sweat here.”

As Arthur crushed the can of soda and tossed it into a recycling bin, he followed Gilgamesh out, wondering what the purpose of bringing up stress was, and if he didn’t figure it out now, he’d find out next time they were in a Jaeger.

\--

Romani woke up to the slow rotation of the fan on the ceiling.

He’d been out for thirteen hours. His phone was filled with missed calls, though some had been answered by Merlin as he told them their directing officer and Marshal was getting some well-needed rest. Merlin wasn’t anywhere in the apartment. He likely went to work to cover for Romani while he was out.

Yawning and itching his stomach beneath his shirt, he opened the refrigerator, blinking in surprise at the contents. Apricots! There had been a shortage of fruit in this area in no small part due to kaiju attacks, so to find them was like uncovering a rare treat. He decided to swipe them and thank Merlin later. They’d make for a decent breakfast—or late lunch, as time would tell.

Merlin’s apartment was stark, with checkerboard kitchen tile and a white clock hanging on the wall counting down all the minutes Romani wasn’t at the base. They weren’t due for another Kaiju attack soon, but there was always the looming threat it could happen no matter what. They were starting to increase in frequency again, so when one would saunter out of the breach was anyone’s game. Still, that didn’t mean it would reach _their_ base. It might be Japan, Australia, or southern California’s problem, not that he’d wish it on any of them.

As he cut open the fruit, he turned on the television in the other room, listening to reports coming in from the day. The news was more bearable now than when he was a young adult—now that the world had banded together against a common threat. Still, it was filled with disaster, traumatic flashbacks to when the world didn’t have the Jaeger program, faith in the wall project that Romani felt was misplaced. He always found it distasteful to see a commercial flip to kaiju-marketed toys or dramas heavily romanticizing the threat they faced, but people needed to cope somehow. They needed to commodify their apocalypse to make it more digestible, to make it feel like it wasn’t really happening yet.

To be face to face with the truth was almost unbearable day in, day out, but Romani would easily stand between a kaiju and the rest of the world if it came down to it.

His cell phone rang. Merlin, it seemed.

“Hello?”

“Hey, they need you at the base as soon as possible. Moriarty wants some special permissions, and we need oversight on the repairs of the jaeger _Circuit Lion_. Edison and Tesla are arguing about it again.”

“Can do. Do you mind if I eat your apricots?” Casually ignoring the fact that he was already eating them.

“Go ahead. I was saving them for you.”

With that, Romani would pull on his clothes, his white jacket, and get in his car; a luxury not many people on the coast had these days—but one the Marshal of this whole operation needed. As he drove off towards the base, towering in the distance, it was hard not to notice the beginnings of a wall taking shape along the coastline. He sighed.

If the Jaeger program were defunded, there would be nothing standing in the way of the breach and all of those terrible things he told Merlin about. He needed to make sure it didn’t happen.


	4. Chapter 4

The scent of oil and the grating sound of high-powered drills permeated the room so thickly that Diarmuid was starting to lose sight of the goal.

 _Circuit Lion_ needed to be fully operational before the end of the week, when calculations dictated the next Kaiju attack. Everyone working on her was pushed into crunch mode. Jaeger work was an unenviable task—it demanded perfection on these big, hulking pieces of metal that were sure to come back in as trashed as they did before. Right now, he was welding a plate that had been twisted off by enormous claws back into position. It was just small enough that a single person could work on it and the circuitry inside. These were perfect machines down to the last wire—they required a certain finesse.

Pushing his helmet up and wiping off the sweat that had accumulated on his brow, leaving a streak of dark grease in his hand’s wake, Diarmuid was just lucky to be on the base at all. He’d failed out of being a pilot after a freak accident on his fifth run, but the Jaeger program spared no one if they could, so he’d been assigned to repair. Anything to help stop the end of the world.

Circuit Lion was a Mk. 4 Jaeger run by two impossibly matched people—Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, who refused to let anyone else touch their baby, hardly got along themselves but were geniuses on the battlefield. So much for the bond of ‘drift compatibility’ being sacred. When Diarmuid was introduced to the concept, it seemed like such a rare thing, but maybe that had just been him projecting onto Fionn, who he’d admired when they were copilots.

“Diarmuid!”

He could hear someone through the sound of buzzing metal. Arthur? He lifted his helmet up again to try and focus on where the call was coming from, eventually zeroing in on the man below. Adjusting the straps that held him up as he worked on the heavy machinery, he eventually untangled himself from them and hopped off of his little work station. They greeted one another with a heavy, back-slapping hug. It had been a while since they’d seen one another.

“How’ve you been?” Diarmuid asked, putting his tools back into place and his helmet under his arm.

“Stressed. Tired. Kaiju are coming in more frequently.”

“So I’ve heard… Circuit Lion’s been deployed once this month already. Took a beating, too.”

Arthur looked up at the Jaeger behind them. It was a really impressive machine, at the top of its class, or soon to be outclassed by the recently finished Mk. 5 Jaegers.

“Want to get something to eat?”

“I’d love to, but I really have to finish my work before the foreman gets here.”

Right… Diarmuid used to be a pilot, which gave him certain privileges, but now he had none of them. Arthur’s face fell slightly. “Well, would you come to see me once you’re all done?”

Diarmuid wanted to tell him he really needed his rest, but he wasn’t one to say no when Arthur had that kind of look on his face. He really was as stressed and tired as he looked. “Sure… uh, I’ll meet you in the cafeteria in an hour.”

“Thanks.”

\--

“How has piloting been going?”

It was a tricky subject with Arthur, but Diarmuid would’ve felt odd if he hadn’t asked.

“It’s… well, it’s going well enough.”

“Do you get along with Gilgamesh?”

Arthur sighed. “No, not really. Every time I feel like there’s going to be some kind of breakthrough, he closes off on me again.”

“He’ll come around to you eventually. I’m sure of it.”

Arthur wasn’t so certain. He’d been in Gilgamesh’s brain, nearly chasing the rabbit the first time. What he saw there, he couldn’t imagine ever opening up to another person after. Of course, it had been the same for him, but the one key difference between Arthur and Gilgamesh was pride. Gilgamesh would never admit to how much he had suffered, instead praising his former copilot for their bravery and trying to abandon the thought of anyone else staying at his side.

He would never admit, beyond simple acknowledgment, the pain that Arthur felt in the drift every single time he was back in a Jaeger.

\--

_It’s the same nightmare for Gil as it always is._

_He might be the only person on the planet who knows the sensation of brain death. People have asked him about it and he refuses to divulge anything._

_Their jaeger, Enuma Elish, is limping through the water as one half is entirely destroyed. The hull had been breached, and Enkidu has taken a hit from a Kaiju—which is like a hammer to an ant. Gilgamesh can feel the sensation of his left side being completely crushed, and the pain is unbearable, but his mind is clear and he isn’t dying. He can’t say the same for his partner, who’s bleeding so profusely from the head and neck that even as they’re walking, like some kind of machine, like some kind of living weapon, Gilgamesh can feel him dying._

_Enkidu isn’t speaking, but Gilgamesh can hear their last thoughts._

_‘It isn’t your fault.’_

_“We’re going to get you back to the base! You’re still walking! You can make it!”_

_‘Because I can’t leave you out here.’_

_“Stop it! Don’t waste your energy on—”_

_‘It’s not your fault. Remember that. I’ll always be right there beside you.’_

_Gilgamesh is taking on more and more of the heavy work of moving the Jaeger as Enkidu’s thoughts die mid-sentence, as he’s screaming in the drift for them to wake up, to keep conscious. Enkidu eventually stops walking. Blood pours from Gilgamesh’s nose as he walks the last bit he can in the Jaeger back to the base, and that’s when Enuma Elish crashes, helicopters are sent out, and Gilgamesh is left in the drift as he feels another mind die. It’s numbing, it’s quiet, it feels like a part of him is dying too. He nearly blacks out, as if one death could trigger another if the minds were linked, but sooner or later, he’s waking up in a hospital bed, gasping for the air that Enkidu couldn’t breathe, checking his own pulse for a heartbeat he was sure wasn’t there._

_\--_

Gilgamesh woke up with a start, struggling to breathe. He’d never rid himself of that memory for as long as he lived, and each time he slept, he met it head on. Immediately, he went to the sink to wash away the sleep from his eyes, to try and jolt himself awake. According to Moriarty’s prediction, an event was likely to happen in the breach today… and checking the clock, it would be soon. Numbers didn’t lie, that was what James always said.

He needed a distraction. Anything, including bothering Arthur, would be fine.

In the cafeteria, he found him and Diarmuid sitting down, eating whatever the kitchen had rationed out this afternoon. Gilgamesh casually invited himself to sit down next to them, as they went oddly quiet with his sudden arrival.

“What’s the matter?” He spoke boisterously. “Did I interrupt something?”

“No, it’s fine.” Arthur felt his appetite wane, but he knew better than to waste food.

“We’re supposed to be on call, Arthur. This is what you’re doing, then? Fraternizing with failed pilots?”

“Don’t—”

“He’s right,” Diarmuid wasn’t going to stick up for himself, he knew what he’d done, which made Arthur want to stick up for him _more_.

“You’re not a failed pilot. Gilgamesh, if you’re going to talk to my friends, can you at least have some manners?”

“Hmph,” Gil’s eyes drifted to the clock above them, marking the time since the last kaiju attack. It had been getting shorter and shorter, and there was no guarantee which way the next kaiju would head. Their base would deploy Excalibur Gold if it emerged near their region, as the other two jaegers were currently being repaired. Arthur didn’t like the idea of deployment hanging over his head, another day forced back into the hull of a Jaeger, but he wouldn’t rather die anywhere else… a morbid train of thought, but one he held onto nonetheless.

Alarms would start hours later, 40 miles off the coast of California, a category 3 named Bulldozer. Neither of them was in the best space for it, but the apocalypse waited for no one.

They’d suit up and get ready for the drop.

\--

As they waded through the water, paying close attention to the radar, people in the city were being evacuated just in case. Meteor Tentyris was being flown in from southern California as back-up, which was an honest relief to both of them, though they didn’t say it out loud to one another. Category 3’s were dangerous—hell, every Kaiju was, but there had never been a category 4 yet, and the very idea of a category 5 was nervewracking.

“Merlin, do you have helicopter visuals yet?” Arthur flipped the switch to speak.

“I do, it’s big—you’re going to need all of the back-ups you can get, so hold steady until Meteor Tentyris gets there.” Romani took control of the microphone after him.

“You two are to engage only if it starts making its way towards the mainland before Meteor Tentyris gets there, okay? We’re fairly sure it’s going to take two Jaegers to take it down.”

“Got it.”

Gilgamesh glanced Arthur’s way. “Ozymandias is a good friend.”

“I know.” He was in his brain, how could he _not_ know.

“He’s going to try and show off.”

Arthur’s voice was resolute. “That doesn’t mean we have to.”

“You’re no fun, Arthur.”

Arthur didn’t respond to his goading, firmly thinking that their glory days were over and this job was now to clean up a mess the world had gotten itself into. Gilgamesh was annoyed that he wasn’t rising to his teasing, but when the blunt-headed kaiju rose from the water, Gilgamesh and Arthur both braced into position. It was still fifteen minutes before their backup would arrive.

‘Keep an eye on its head,’ Arthur thought. ‘Looks like it’s made to charge.’

‘I already noticed,’ Gilgamesh thought in turn.

No sooner did Arthur think those words did the beast start to surge through water, forcing them to sidestep it through the rushing ocean. The Kaiju, a mass of muscle and power, turned to face it almost immediately, slashing out with its talons bared against the metal of the Jaeger’s torso. Excalibur Gold took hold of its head, digging its feet into the ocean floor and neutralizing the biggest threat.

“Plasma cannon!”

“I’m working on it!”

Even as the beast pushed them back, one hand on its head and the other charging a cannon, both of them were thinking the same thing; Meteor Tentyris, hurry the _fuck_ up! This one was unbelievably powerful, able to move a jaeger that had anchored itself to the ground and was firing shot after shot into its stomach. Had they built up a defense to this kind of weaponry?

“I can’t tell if we’re hitting it--!” Arthur shouted out.

“It’s still moving,” Gilgamesh grimaced. “It’s _unphased_!”

Suddenly, their radio cut to a boastingly laughing voice. “Do I hear two damsels in distress?”

“Ozymandias!”

“Hope we’re not too late!”

Arthur couldn’t afford to take his eyes off of the kaiju, but Gilgamesh glanced to the side and saw helicopters releasing their hold on Meteor Tentyris. It was faster than Excalibur Gold, charging through the water and leaping up before crashing down onto Bulldozer. Before the Kaiju could react, it was sent back down into the water, Excalibur Gold backing up and paying close attention to the readings on the camera.

“We lit it up twice—” Arthur radioed in. “I don’t think it’s dead yet.”

“On your left!” Arash called out.

Excalibur Gold and its pilots braced itself as the kaiju emerged from the water, bleeding from where it had been shot, tanking the Jaeger into the ocean. Meteor Tentyris was quick, grabbing the plates on the back of the kaiju to rip it off of them, using their far more dexterous arms to hold the kaiju back.

“Fire into it again, we can’t hold it much longer!” Ozymandias shouted into the radio.

The plasma cannon took precious few seconds of time to charge once more, but eventually, they emptied the entire clip into its massive stomach, stopping only when it was clear they would hit Meteor Tentyris if they fired anymore. As the beast started sinking down into the ocean, Excalibur Gold grabbed it by the head.

“Moriarty will want his specimen,” Gilgamesh said, coldly. “We’re dragging it back.”

Arthur nodded.

\--

Meteor Tentyris and its pilots were the heroes of the day. Stopping by briefly in their base’s hangar to visit with the other pilots, Arthur was glad the attention was off of the two of them for once. They’d done well to use the cannon. It cauterized the wounds instantly, stopping the Kaiju Blue from leaking out into the ocean and poisoning the entire area. The recon team gathering up the slaughtered beast’s valuable parts were careful in excavating all of it.

Gilgamesh and Ozymandias were chatting cheerfully as Arash and Arthur spoke more quietly in the other room. Arthur was professing his thanks and Arash was gently telling him that he would’ve done the same for them, anyway. What matters was that the clock would be reset, and they’d have a moment to breathe before the next attack.

“How have you been, Arthur?”

“I don’t know. Okay, I guess? When you’re fighting day in, day out—”

“I know how it feels,” Arash laughed lightly before his appearance took on a more somber look. “It’s always an adrenaline rush until you lose someone. I’m the kind of person who wishes I could be in there alone if it’d spare Ozymandias from all of this.”

“I get what you mean.”

“But… pilot to pilot connection is necessary. I’m used to fighting all my battles alone, so to have someone by my side is a welcome change.”

Arthur nodded. Arash had been in the military before joining the Jaeger program, so he knew all about the kaiju attacks pre-Jaeger era. He couldn’t imagine what that was like.

“How is Gilgamesh?”

“… he’s alright,” Arthur was glad he finally had someone he could avoid telling the whole truth to. It wasn’t like talking to Gil, who would know right away. “Hard to get along with sometimes, but he’s fine.”

It seemed Arash didn’t buy it, though. “And you’re still drift compatible, being just ‘fine’?”

“You know it’s my special talent. Drifting with anyone…” Arthur didn’t like making a big deal out of it, though. “He’s good. Keeps me going.”

“As long as you’re happy, Arthur.”

\--

“Bring it in!”

Da Vinci was guarding her precious Kaiju brain cargo like it was the key to solving the apocalypse—which it very well might have been. As it was brought into the researcher’s quarters, she was quick to shoo out any of the stragglers looking to hang around after the precious specimens had been brought in. Sherlock and Moriarty watched with quiet fascination as she began to hook up the machine that would allow her to drift with the dying brain of Bulldozer.

“You’re certain you want to do this…?” Moriarty asked, amazed at her dedication to research. “You know, we could always waste a non-scientific mind on this—”

“A non-scientific mind might not be able to parse what they see in the drift! I will be going in myself. If I die, you’ll just have the proof you need to not do it again!” Lights were flipped on, plugs were plugged in. Da Vinci strapped the drifting mechanism to her head, knowing time was of the essence. No one had tracked the brain death of a kaiju before, as the brain was known to self-terminate quickly while still in the body. “Or you’ll have the proof to do it with two brains instead of one.”

“I think no one is going to want to drift with a kaiju after seeing you drop dead from it.”

“Where’s your sense of scientific venture? Hmm? Anyway, I’m going in. Count me down, Sherlock!”

“3…2…1…”

As Da Vinci hit the switch, impulses and memories flooded her mind, first her own, before strange, alien visions flooded her brain. She could feel blood dripping down from her nose but she didn’t dare quit the drift—so much important information was flooding her mind that she couldn’t.

Moments later, Sherlock and Moriarty were prying the contraption off of her head and trying to resolutely shake her awake. She blinked a few times, touching her hand to her face as her fingertips trembled.

“My god…”

“What did you see?” Sherlock was the first to stay on task.

“You were right—wrong—and right again. My god, we’re dealing with _colonizers_.”

“Then my theory about us terraforming the planet for them?” Moriarty asked, eagerly.

“Spot on. These are weapons of mass destruction… their own Jaegers sent to destroy the living vermin on this planet. They consume planets and move onto the next. But it’s going to get worse. Oh my god…”

Sherlock hurried off to find Romani and Merlin, as Moriarty asked questions faster than she could answer. His math was correct, but now there were so many intense variables to deal with. The brain had already died off before she could get a chance to see more. All she knew was this:

This was an alien threat designed to wipe out humanity, and it would not stop so long as the breach was open. Categories would go up in the variety of Kaiju sent through, but there was just one question on her mind. She was sure the mind she went through wasn’t just one mind, but several. A hivemind.

If she could see what was in their minds, could they see what was in hers? A drift is a two-way street.

She might have handed them the biggest weapon they could possibly use.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know it's bad when _Ozymandias_ is calling out Gilgamesh.

Arash and Ozymandias would stay at their base for a few more days before being flown back to San Diego.

Gilgamesh was glad for the company. Aside from Arthur, who had his tolerance and shallow trust, he didn’t care much for the other pilots in their San Francisco base and didn’t speak to anyone who wasn’t a pilot, hardly. Now that they were deep into the war against kaiju, alcohol and things that weren’t necessary for survival were harder to come by. Still, he knew a place, a bar in an upscale side of town that had a stock of wines from ages gone by that they were willing to uncork for a price. Gilgamesh had poured a lot of his own money into the Jaeger program, including getting initiated into it, but he was still fabulously wealthy. If he wanted, he could ride out the apocalypse in a bunker inland and never be worse for wear for it, but he simply wasn’t that kind of man.

As he and Ozymandias sat back in the lounge with two bottles of wine (an excessive expenditure, for certain) and glasses they clinked together, Gilgamesh was content to let Ozymandias talk. About Arash and his intimate relationship with him, about his wife, about how Kaiju were coming in more frequently and how it was putting a strain on resources. They’d lost two good pilots just two months ago, and it was such a shame—though Gil didn’t really like to talk about it.

“Have you gotten any closer to Arthur?”

“Aside from him checking me out once? Not at all.” Arthur looking over his body and complimenting it in his mind hadn’t gone unnoticed by Gilgamesh whatsoever.

“He checked you out?”

“Thought ‘if only his body matched his personality.’ Feh! A flatterer, am I right?”

“You two are awfully closed off from one another…”

“We’re not,” Gilgamesh corrected him, drinking deeply from his wineglass. “We’re perfectly open to one another. It doesn’t mean we care about it very much.”

Ozymandias whistled. “Sad. A pilot’s trust is the closest kind you can have.”

“Well, I had it once already,” Gilgamesh set the glass firmly against the table. “And that was enough. If Arthur dies, I don’t want it to hang over me.”

Ozymandias studied his face with a stern expression, as if he felt disapproving of Gilgamesh’s words. “I doubt that’s how you truly feel.”

“What if it is?”

“I know you. You wouldn’t get into a jaeger without someone you trusted. If you trust someone, you don’t want to see them die.”

“Arthur and I trust each other not to hurt one another, to catch each other when the other falls, but that kind of trust you can have with anyone! It’s not like a friendship, it’s like being reliable coworkers. End of story,” Gilgamesh rolled his eyes. “You’re right, I don’t want to see him die. But it’s not nearly as intimate as you’re suggesting it should be.”

“Haha! You two must fight terribly then!”

“Please, now you’re going to tell me to sleep with him to improve our piloting skills.”

“It certainly helps me…” Ozymandias admitted slyly.

“… aren’t you married?”

“Who said she wasn’t involved?”

“Messy.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Ozymandias leaned back in his chair, taking in the comforting atmosphere of the lounge. “We communicate and have boundaries. You don’t even seem to have that much with your copilot.”

“So what? You’re hung up on this. Arthur is only here to pilot the left hemisphere. I don’t need anything else from him other than that.”

Ozymandias and Gilgamesh usually saw eye to eye, but something in the way that he worded that… upset Ozymandias. No, it would be more accurate to say that it pissed him off.

“You’d think you’d have learned by now…”

“Learned what?” Gilgamesh’s eyes narrowed.

“People aren’t just ‘left hemispheres’ or extra parts you need for piloting a Jaeger. You’ve been inside of his head. You know better than anyone what he’s afraid of. He knows better than anyone what you’re afraid of, and yet you two seem to be throwing one another under the bus. It’s selfish. You shouldn’t be in the hull at all if you’re going to treat a pilot like a piece of meat.”

“You’re hung up on nonsense. We get the job done. I don’t see why there’s any more need to—”

“Because you both know what it’s like to lose a pilot. I have been lucky enough never to know that kind of pain, but closing yourself off? Pretending Arthur means nothing to you? You’re using each other for revenge and it’s going to get you _both_ killed. And what then? What happens when one of you is left behind with all of the memories—the soul of the other person? Are you just going to call him your left hemisphere then? Are you going to keep living with three people inside of you?”

“Don’t talk to me like you know what I’ve been through.”

“Then don’t talk to me like you don’t need people to make it out of the apocalypse.”

The mood had been thoroughly soured after that. Gilgamesh wasn’t going to waste his wine, so he poured himself another glass with the last of it. It wasn’t enough to get anyone drunk, let alone him. He suspected it had been watered down or something— even a high-end establishment like this was trying to make their booze last as long as it could, the finite resource that it was.

“I’m not going to change myself just because you’re _judging_ me, now. You, of all people!” Ozymandias and Gilgamesh were similar in personality, and both of them knew it. To be called out by the other felt like a slap in the face.

“Then that’s a shame because I don’t know what other wake-up call to give you.” Ozymandias finished off the rest of his wine and stood up. “I think it’s time to head back to the base.”

“Hm.”

“Are you coming?”

Gilgamesh finished the last of his drink as well, not bothering to hide his anger.

“Sure.”

\--

“What were you thinking?!”

Da Vinci had an ice pack to her head, the throbbing ache not soothed by the fact that Romani was freaking out. Merlin hung back and watched as the other scientists hovered around her, all the while she maintained a smug, if slightly worried expression. The brain she’d drifted with was detached from a body, and didn’t have the second brain—there was a chance that any drift between her and the rest of the hivemind was spotty at best. It wasn’t like she’d given up all their secrets, or at least she hoped.

“You could have died! This technology Sherlock stole is old, it’s not meant for one person to use!”

“Actually, it is—”

“You know what I mean!” Romani barked back. “It was retired because single-pilot drifting is deadly! Are you okay? You don’t know the long-term effects this could have on you—”

“We’re at the end of the world, Romani,” Da Vinci replied, level-headedly. “We have to do what we can to save everyone.” Even now, she was writing down what she’d seen in her head. “And I’m not dead, am I? That’s the great genius Da Vinci for you! I know this machinery inside and out. I modified it myself to bottleneck the neural load in case it became too much.”

“And you’re sure of what you saw?”

“Certain.”

“What if they try to find you?”

“Well, hopefully, I’ll have a few jaegers between me and them, for one.”

“We’re going to need a lot more than a few jaegers…” He whispered to himself quietly, beginning to pace the room.

“Perhaps this isn’t as bad as we’re thinking?” Merlin offered, hopefully. “A look into the mind’s eye of a Kaiju is all we could have hoped for. And with our top scientist—no offense, Moriarty and Sherlock—still visibly alive with no side effects we know of or can account for, we might have handed ourselves the winning ticket.”

Romani, indeed, began to calm down. He wanted to know everything, everything she saw, everything that could possibly happen, and as Da Vinci began to confirm their worst fears and suspicions were close to the mark, the more Romani began to think. Knowing this was terrible, sure, but it gave him a game plan. An idea to work off of. No longer could they just wait around for the breach to keep spitting out Kaiju. They had to have a way to work this out, and he had to make one fast.

“Hitting the breach directly never works… do you know anything about that now, Da Vinci?”

“I didn’t get a long enough glimpse,” Her shaking had since calmed down somewhat. “I need another Kaiju brain. This one is unviable now.”

Moriarty, who’d been mostly silent, sighed as the rest of the room looked at him. “… You want me to use my connections, correct?”

“I’m afraid it’s an order,” Romani said, sighing.

“Well, I suppose Da Vinci and I are overdue for a field trip… how do you feel about visiting Hong Kong?”

\--

Gilgamesh had made stiff amends with Ozymandias by the time they got back to the base. Ozymandias knew that his lecture was merited but understood where Gilgamesh was coming from—admitting that there was no easy answer was a kingly thing to do. Still, the very idea of using Arthur as a second copilot and not a partner was unfair to both of them, and he wouldn’t apologize for saying it. All at once, Gilgamesh longed for his lavish home that was situated far inland and simultaneously wanted nothing more than his private room on the base. He wanted his privacy, his peace, and quiet to think about things best left unspoken.

‘Are you going to keep living with three people inside of you?’

To say that was no stretch of the imagination. Gilgamesh had every one of Enkidu’s memories as clear as his own. To say that they lived on in him would be a gross understatement. Now in the mix were Arthur’s memories, and two times Gilgamesh was able to remember someone dying in the cockpit of a Jaeger. In turn, Arthur had Artoria’s memories, and so Gil was able to recall some of hers as well. Not as easily as when he was in a jaeger, but enough. Enough to know that she and her brother were a special breed of people, natural royalty born into common forms. Cut from the same cloth as him. That’s why he’d flirted with both of them while she was still alive.

Between Arthur and Gilgamesh, four people lived on. It was sometimes a comfort to think that maybe Enkidu was still conscious through his own mind, and Gilgamesh simply wasn’t aware of it, like a second personality that never took over. Other times, he knew better than that. He knew his best friend wouldn’t leave him alone for so long.

Arthur was the kind of person he could see himself bullying to hide a crush, only to drive him away from him, if they were born in another life. Now, at the end of the world and standing on the verge of it, Gilgamesh realized his time with Arthur was precious little, and that a monstrous race of beings threatened to trample over all evidence of human life. If one of them died, someone with all four of their memories would still remain. If both did, every trace of Enkidu and Artoria would be snuffed out. They had a duty to live and see this to the end.

Shrugging off his jacket and throwing it over the edge of a chair, he deliberately ignored a picture from his earlier days piloting and tried not to think of the average jaeger pilot mortality rate. There were less and less of them, now. A pilot pair from Japan, Semiramis and Amakusa, had recently both perished in a fight. There was no longer any time for funerals. People said their prayers and moved on.

How life managed to march forward despite everything, in spite of the hellscape they lived in, reminded Gilgamesh that he had the privilege of being the world’s last hero, as opposed to its first. Children inland still went to school. Farmers harvested crops for a desperate population. Life couldn’t stop and stare at the apocalypse as it stared back. This was an honor, a gift. Gilgamesh didn’t see his life as a curse, but the opposite.

As his back hit the mattress, frustration was welling up inside of him. Arthur had the nerve to say that they should be closer but made almost no effort to do so, wallowing in his own misery. He couldn’t see the grand task they’d been handed, tasked with survival in the most unreasonable odds. As he stared at the industrial fan that circled above him, he suddenly yearned for a connection. He wanted Arthur to understand, to rise and challenge him, and only then maybe he’d respect him and give in. Was it seriously up to Gilgamesh to do all of the work?

Sooner or later, he drifted off into a dream-filled sleep that was an amalgamate of several people’s worth of memories. They were hazy and strange, filled with complexes he didn’t have and undertones he didn’t understand. When he woke up, he knew what he had to do.

\--

Arthur had taken over for Diarmuid’s shift in repairing Excalibur Gold. The man needed rest, and he happily volunteered his own personal room to him, so he might get some sleep instead of trying to rest in the barracks. Besides, this was easy, mindless work. Follow instructions, weld here and there, and it made him feel like he was taking care of Excalibur Gold for all of the protecting it did for him. A jaeger wasn’t a sentient being, but it did share his brain. He couldn’t help but feel kinship for it.

He wondered a bit about how the world would heal from its scars given by the jaeger program. An entire generation would grow up cursed with the knowledge that they survived the apocalypse. Irreversible damage had been done to humanity, and now they knew they weren’t alone in the universe. The kind of paranoia and fear that would give humans would last centuries, maybe millennia before they ever got comfortable again. Arthur might’ve given anything to grow up in a more peaceful era.

When the foreman signaled for him to take a break, he returned his tools to his kit and let another person take over. He was sweating, and his shirt clung to him even as he fanned it against himself. Grease covered his arms and he felt like a mess.

He was surprised to see Gilgamesh walking towards him once he got out of the hangar.

“Gilgame—”

“You’re coming with me, Pendragon.”

“Wh—at least let me clean up first.”

“Where else do you think we’re headed? The showers, of course.”

Arthur blinked.

“What?”

“You heard me. Come on.”

If Arthur had any sort of shame reflex with Gilgamesh, he’d blush and say no, but Gilgamesh knew him frankly more intimately than what anyone could get by seeing another person naked. There was absolutely no sense in being embarrassed around him.

He merely agreed, following him into the shower room and beginning to strip.

\--

The hot water that fell from the nozzle coaxed and relaxed Arthur plenty, as he took a bar of soap and washed away the greasy marks on his arms. Though he didn’t look over at Gilgamesh specifically, he knew the other man brought him in here to talk.

“What’s on your mind?”

“…” Gilgamesh hesitated. “A lot.”

“… you can talk about it if you want—”

“I don’t think I need to talk about it, Arthur. You’ll see it in the drift.”

“Yes, but there’s no guarantee we’ll get out of the drift alive,” Arthur countered. “So it’s probably for the best that we talk about it here and now.”

Damn it, he was right. “… Ozymandias claimed that I was mistreating you.”

“…?” Arthur glanced his way.

“Or perhaps—no, that’s not right,” Gilgamesh said finally. “That I’m taking advantage of you. Using you.”

“… well, yeah.”

“You knew?”

“It’s hard not to tell what you want from me while I’m in your head.”

“So why have you agreed to pilot with me?”

“Our goals are the same, and you wouldn’t go down without a fight. That’s all you need in a pilot, right?”

Ozymandias’ words echoed in Gilgamesh’s mind. “… no, I don’t think so.”

“Then--?”

“I just… want to…” He trailed off. “Know you better.”

“You already know me better than anyone.”

“No, I don’t. There’s a difference between someone’s memories and how they act.” After a moment, Arthur realized Gilgamesh was facing him. He looked his way—making sure to keep eye contact.

“I could recite every one of your important memories, and maybe infer how you’d react from them, but I can never tell exactly what you’re going to do. You’re a bit of a mystery, Arthur, even in the drift. I still don’t know exactly what you want from me.”

Arthur looked away. He could never tell him he wanted a pilot connection like the one he had with Artoria, even if he’d figure it out next time they were in the drift. “Something I can’t have, probably.”

“My friendship?”

“… something … like that.”

“… hmph.” Gilgamesh didn’t affirm his wants or deny them, he just turned up the heat on the shower nozzle and let the soap run from his hair. Arthur wondered if he’d dragged him out here just to shame him for wanting what he had before if he’d known already and just wanted to make Arthur say it, but Arthur had no clue that Gilgamesh was doing all his pride would allow breaching the barrier between them, but it simply wasn’t enough.

Arthur finished up cleaning up and turned off the nozzle. This was another bust, somewhere he couldn’t get any further without something happening. At least they had time, time before the next Kaiju attack to try and get somewhere before one or both of them got killed, the very real reality of that hanging over them.

He just didn’t know what they needed to break that barrier between them.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the late, animal crossing is just... so good.

Romani could remember the times before the crisis, the Event, the great undoing and the advent of the fight for mankind. He could remember when the kaiju were big, frightening, and unknown most of all. They thought it was the one attack, the one… gigantic… thing, visiting their shores. Even as they mourned their dead, they thought it would be only one. Leviathan, sprung from the ocean waters, proving conspiracy theorists and doomsayers alike right. He was still young back then, but old enough to be afraid in a real way. Once humanity learned life was out there, they were confident that even if it took days to gun down, the first would be the last.

However, they kept coming.

The human condition naturally commodifies anything that threatens it; that “Leviathan”, years after it attacked, became the stuff of inside jokes told around people who wouldn’t hush them for being insensitive. If you could laugh at it, you could fight it and survive it. Artists don’t stop painting during the apocalypse, their work accelerates; leaving their last imprint upon the world is never more important than that exact moment.

Kaiju were marketable. The end times were trendy. Everyone has some form of trauma, and in that shared experience, they could all joke about it, because the people at the front lines were making sure that it never reached them. Romani was jealous. He wanted to know a world where a kaiju named Lockjaw hadn’t taken one of his best friends when he was younger. He wanted to laugh at all the ridiculous names people come up with for new beasts rising from the Breach. Hookeye. Tribulation. Defiler. All ridiculous and all apt. He had nightmares about it when he did sleep, so he tried not to.

Merlin was…

He was ridiculous, and that very fact kept him sane.

His little text messages pretending to be an idol had been the saving grace between missions, between the long months where kaiju attacks were separated. He couldn’t believe he actually looked forward to the charade, knowing how fake it was, but it was oddly intimate. He knew he was just speaking to the biggest con-man in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, but it started to change once Romani dared to be vulnerable. Merlin had lost half of his protégés in one of the attacks, yet still messaged him as if nothing was wrong. Perhaps being someone else was also a coping mechanism for Merlin, or perhaps he just couldn’t stop thinking of Romani.

Eventually Romani wanted it to stop. He wanted to talk to Merlin, first and foremost. He took his phone and asked him if he’d been flirting with him or if he was just pretending to be an idol.

Merlin did the strangest thing. He leaned in with that infuriating smile of his and said any feelings Romani might have been hiding weren’t so one-sided, but he could pretend they were for the sake of their careers.

Romani couldn’t hide them any longer. He wanted to know who Merlin really was, and Merlin told him that he wouldn’t have to work very hard to find out.

That was the biggest lie Merlin ever told. Romani still wasn’t sure if he really knew the real Merlin, or if he even had to. Perhaps the smile Merlin wore was putting his best self forward to leave the rest behind. That he didn’t want someone he loved to see the worst sides of himself, even if Romani would forgive him for them.

Romani wasn’t the same. Merlin quickly found out about… that. About _Solomon_ , and Merlin kept that secret better than any of his own.

At 2:07 back at the base, Romani was going through paperwork over a pot of coffee. Not a mug, a full pot. One of the few luxuries he allowed himself was a brand of coffee he liked, everything else was rationed out among the rest of the staff. Soon though, the coffee would be gone, and he’d have to drink the bitter instant stuff with the rest of them. Da Vinci, Moriarty, and Holmes had left in one of the few aircraft they could spare at the time for Hong Kong just a few hours earlier. Holmes was an expert at filing his work in incomprehensible jargon only he himself understood, and he was parsing through it like a code.

“Surely, you have people for this?” Merlin asked softly.

“I’m the biggest expert on single-person drifting this base has to offer,” Romani said tiredly, flipping from one page to the next. “I have to oversee this.”

“You need to rest. The next kaiju attack is—”

“I know. I know, if you want to help, take that stack of papers and read through them with me. I know you’re smarter than you look, Merlin.”

Giving a mock-offended ‘tsk’, Merlin took a seat beside him. He was surprised to see how thoroughly Holmes documented what Da Vinci said, along with his own hypothesis in conjunction with her words. It took about two paragraphs before Merlin could start feeling his eyes glaze over and pat Romani’s shoulder.

“Let’s take a walk. You and me, come on.”

Romani was reluctant to abandon his work, but pouring one’s life into Kaiju took its toll. He saw the monsters when he slept, he saw them when he was awake, and Merlin provided the one reprieve from his work around them. He’d dreamed of studying theoretical science before, but everything before him now was far too real. He didn’t know if he was the type to thrive after the war or emerge better for it, and time would tell.

As Merlin took an umbrella with him, harsh rain battered the outside of the base. It had been like this for a few days now, the rain so rampant that it formed puddles wherever one walked, making every surface dangerous and sleek.

Merlin procured the most curious thing from his white lab coat pocket—a green apple. Without thinking, Romani took it and took a bite before passing it back to him as Merlin did the same.

“Do you know some back-alley fruit merchant?” Romani asked. “I know apples are more common than _apricots_ , but they’re still not very—”

“It’s worth having a bite of the old days,” Merlin was older than Romani, and Romani didn’t know by how much—maybe five, six years? But the wisdom the man exuded when he wasn’t being a pest was unmatched. “To have something to remind us we have a world to get back to.”

“… yeah.”

“Please make sure you never make the kaiju your life, Roman. You’ll have to adapt to the outside world once this is all over.”

“How do you always know what I’m thinking…?”

“I’m either clairvoyant or the world around us poses similar questions we ask ourselves. I’m looking forward to taking my savings from working here to buy a nice beach house. Assuming there are any left.”

“You’d get sick and die from kaiju blue your first time out in the ocean. All the rich territory right now is inland. They say past the Rockies is the safest place to be, since they don’t think Kaiju can make it past the mountains.”

“Ah. You know better.”

“I do.”

“Well, I’m counting on the ocean bouncing back. It’s faced worse things than toxic monster blood, after all. Humans are its second-biggest threat, after all.”

Romani paused.

“You’re very certain.”

“Of course. Dr. Romani Archaman is in charge of this wing of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. If anything, he’ll make sure this coast is clear of kaiju himself. You were there when this all started. You’ll finish it.”

Romani took the apple back, taking the last big bite out of it before throwing the core away in a nearby bin. Water droplets darkened his lab coat even with the umbrella above their heads.

“I need to talk to Avicebron about the next Mk. 5 Jaeger.”

“Avicebron? Haven’t heard that name in a while.”

“He’s the one responsible for Jaegers in the first place. A modern-day mad scientist. Everyone who laughed at him at the first proposal is no longer laughing, but I hear his health is declining. He’s still determined to design one last Mk. 5 Jaeger, and I’m thinking about the pilots for it…”

“Who are you considering?”

“Not sure. We might need entirely new pilots. Excalibur Gold is reaching its limits, though. It’s one of the first digital Jaeger to be produced, which means it needs upgrades. There’s also the matter of the copilots…”

“Yes? What about them?”

“… I think they’re capable enough to handle a new Jaeger while we hand Excalibur Gold off to a B team. It’ll take time to build, though. Even with the technology we have, Jaeger production still takes months.”

“You’re not thinking of piloting it yourself, are you?” Merlin lightheartedly nudged.

“… no,” Romani shook his head. “My days in the cockpit are done.”

“I think you might be wrong about your picks, though. Arthur and Gilgamesh… won’t be useful in a jaeger together much longer, I think.”

Romani had no reason to doubt him but looked at Merlin as if to let him continue.

“They’re trying, now. Trying to reach one another. Once they become attached to one another, that’s when the panic will set in when they’re in a jaeger together. The memories will rush back. They’ll chase the R.A.B.I.T.-- the only reason they’ve done so well for so long is that they’ve maintained distance despite compatibility.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“Hm?”

“I think nothing benefits two pilots more than understanding one another.”

“Is that you or your training with Fujimaru and Kyrelight talking? I know you want nothing more than to get them in their own Jaeger.”

Romani hadn’t talked about it often, but he had taken on protégés the same as Merlin once had. They were a young pair of girls with remarkable compatibility, but Romani didn’t want to send them out just yet. They were just barely out of high school, and the threat of losing them felt too steep.

“They can help out at the base for now. But yes, Merlin, they have been a positive influence on me.”

“And I’m the negative one?”

“Always.”

Merlin wrapped his arm around Romani’s shoulder and pressed his lips to his. Romani could still taste the sweet flavor of the fruit they shared on his mouth.

“Let’s head back.”

\--

Arthur stared into his mirror.

He had to get over himself. Do something. His last conversation with Gilgamesh was strange. He’d never seen the man actually try to connect with him before and didn’t quite understand his motives. This was a man who’d sworn off all friendships after losing the one he had. Arthur thought keeping his distance was the one thing that’d keep them both happy, but something had sparked a change in Gilgamesh. Maybe it was only a small change for now, but if he didn’t meet him halfway, then…

It always came back to Artoria, who’d be furious with him for closing himself off after her death, but who he couldn’t get _over_. He turned the faucet on and splashed his face with water, feeling stubble on his chin from missing his morning shave. Without her, it felt like he had no guidance in the world. She’d know what to do about Gilgamesh, and the worst part of it all was that he had her memories—and he could thoroughly guess from those what she’d tell him.

When you lose someone normally, you have the luxury of things left unsaid. You never know if someone would resent you or forgive you for their last moments on Earth, but when their hull was breached, Artoria instantly forgave him and gave him the sense that “you’ll be okay”, and he wished she didn’t. The guilt would be easier to live with if she blamed him a little.

She’d want him to finish what they started.

She’d want him to get along with his new copilot.

When Arthur finished shaving and touched the smooth skin on his face, he resolved to go find Gilgamesh and talk to him, _even_ if he didn’t know what about. Even if he was struggling to try.

It took him a while, but he found the other man eventually. Leaning against the wall inside Romani’s office, watching the rain and thunder pour down. After living through Kaiju after Kaiju, the uproarious noise of lightning was comforting. Natural. They’re both too used to sirens and shrill, inhuman cries that anything else not tied to those moments is peace.

(They really will have trouble adjusting into life after this, he thinks.)

“Gilgamesh?”

“Mm.” The other man is drinking coffee—no doubt Romani’s reserves, pilfered with good intention.

“Do you want to go into town with me?”

“Why? Everything is sure to be closed.”

“Indoor market’s open, rain or shine.”

“Why go there when we have everything we need at the base?”

“Because—” Arthur started, then continued. “Because I don’t see what you’re like outside of the base. I’d like to.”

Gilgamesh was no hypocrite. He approached Arthur with these intentions in the shower and figured it would be useless to deny him now. Besides, they still have time before the next attack, and he’d better spend what could be his last days doing something of value instead of watching the rain.

“Let’s go.”

\--

The market felt like something from the past brought into the future.

Supermarkets no longer held dominion over the trade of goods any longer, what with the looming threat above all of them. Hawkers sold food (freshwater fish, guaranteed not to be poisoned, rare foods that only specialty farms grew, all at a marked up price) and goods (clothing, usually old but decent, necessities from the factories inland) to people clamoring to get whatever was freshest. It was noisy, and Gil remembered quickly how much he disliked this place. Arthur would stop by small vendors and pick up a few rare treats, like avocado and a bag of chips. Gilgamesh would stand back and judge the people going between stalls.

“Remember when there were grocery stores?” Arthur asked.

“I remember.”

The two of them were old enough to remember the days before Kaiju, even if they were younger than Romani and Merlin. It was a shame to know children would grow up without ever knowing what those peaceful days were like.

“So—”

Gilgamesh merely flitted his gaze towards Arthur as he began to speak.

“What made you come out here? Risk your life on the front lines? I know you’re wealthy enough to wait this out.”

“I don’t trust anyone to do a job I could be doing myself. Imagine if you put your life into the hands of others, instead of taking a stand and surviving yourself. We’d all be dead.”

“You sure are confident in the Defense Corps, huh…”

“My trust needs to be earned. If I wasn’t there on the frontlines, there could’ve been a day where someone in my place failed and failed badly, and then, sitting pretty in my villa in the Midwest, my life would be ruined by some kaiju trampling across it. I can trust certain persons. _People_ , in general, I don’t trust.”

Arthur could understand. Once he was on the front lines, he couldn’t imagine living a life in relative safety knowing _how close_ they all were to destruction, knowing how paper-thin their defenses could be as the enemy evolved. The paranoia would get to him. Picking up a soda from a vending machine (prices were now 5 dollars a can—ridiculous), he cracked it open and offered Gilgamesh the first sip, who eyed him somewhat aloofly as rain fell just outside the concrete entrance of the marketplace.

He took it anyway.

“I get it,” Arthur said as Gilgamesh took a drink. “I don’t want to be anywhere but the battlefield.”

“You’d think the pair of us would be clamoring to get away…”

“Not with what we know,” Arthur said firmly. “Not with who helped us.”

Gilgamesh could feel his respect for Arthur grow just a bit. It would be a while before he got any further than that, but it was a start. He passed the can back to Arthur and looked into the bag of food Arthur had procured while they were here.

“You probably spent half your paycheck on all that.”

“Well, I’d rather spend it on _something_. You never know—”

“I know.” Gilgamesh’s mood went bitter very quickly. Why was the whole “death hanging over us” thing such a conversation killer? “But you should trust me a little bit more to keep you alive.”

Silence fell between them before Arthur pushed through it. “I trust you, Gilgamesh.”

“Do you?”

“I do. There’s a reason we work well together, after all.”

“And it’s not just your little ‘gift’?”

“It’s because we understand what needs to be done, and we don’t let anything get in the way of that.” Arthur sighed. “I respect you a lot, Gilgamesh. You could’ve taken the easy way out of all of this, and you never did. You chose to be here. You weren’t recruited and you don’t have a special gift the PPDC can exploit. You’re…”

“I’m _what_.”

“A hero. The real definition of one.”

Gilgamesh bristled. No one would call him that willingly, normally—his ego too big and his armor too impenetrable, but with ego came capability. What Arthur said wasn’t untrue. He was here because he needed to be, because he didn’t trust humans to save him, because he trusted himself to save humanity. To hear it from Arthur was like a 180. Weren’t they trading barbs just a few weeks ago? Wasn’t Arthur keeping his head low to not earn his ire?

“Amazing how I never heard that from you in the drift.”

“It’s more or less just dawned on me.”

“Better now than never, I suppose.”

Arthur offered to share his bounty of food with Gilgamesh instead of eating whatever the cafeteria was serving this evening, and to his surprise, Gilgamesh accepted. Conversation between them was already sparse-- why say anything when you could say it in the drift?—But Arthur was beginning to talk. Slowly and surely, he was opening up to Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh knew this was his goal, but he still wasn’t sure if he liked it, seeing Arthur’s vulnerabilities. It was almost tempting to show his own, even if he always stopped himself.

Arthur was… interesting. Few people ever were to Gilgamesh, and whether in or out of the drift, he wanted to see more.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Major character death.

Hong Kong made it feel like the world was back to normal.

Da Vinci marveled at the streets, packed with people going out and about as if nothing were wrong—as if other cities didn’t even need to worry about the threat. Even though Kaiju bones made up architecture in a few places, skewing the sense of reality they had known before, it felt like it was a relic from before the era of disaster.

Moriarty moved at a quick pace throughout the bustling city. Giving little commands like ‘keep up, keep up!’, he would occasionally shine a blacklight onto random signs, say something like ‘ah, I knew it’ and round a completely different corner. It was hard for Da Vinci and Sherlock to keep up, particularly Da Vinci—who would excuse herself for a moment to hold a handkerchief to her face and blot away a few drops of blood.

It was a particularly dangerous time to be in Hong Kong, as well.

They’d spent the first week setting things up with the local division of PPDC, and now each of them knew that a kaiju attack was bound to happen within the next few days—information that had been handed out to everyone brusquely to prepare for the worst. One wouldn’t guess the immediate threat with the state of the streets, but…

“Come along, then!”

Moriarty quickly turned into a back alley and waved the rest of them forward. This was Moriarty’s job before he went ‘legal’, working for the defense corps. His knowledge on Kaiju had been invaluable, particularly when his trade had honed him into an expert. He’d left the whole operation in the hands of Babbage, and this was merely a branch office, but it was the biggest, most well-stocked one by far. If they didn’t have a kaiju brain, they would definitely be the right people to harvest one. There hadn’t been a kaiju attack here in a very long time—leaving the scientists to believe it was well overdue.

All of this had been dangerously calculated, from the location to the timing. They were putting themselves in harm’s way, sure, but it was for the greater good—or so they argued to themselves.

Moriarty threw open the double doors of the establishment with a flourish.

Immediately, he started speaking in Mandarin, giving orders to everyone around him. He assumed the role of head of operations so naturally, the other two wondered if he had secretly been in charge this whole time. Da Vinci watched in fascination and Sherlock watched with a subdued interest as all of the various kaiju parts were shuffled around them, off to being shipped illegally around the world. Moriarty had said before that the money wasn’t in the brain—it atrophied too quickly under the quick decay, but you could sell any part of it for medicine or to science labs around the world.

“No brain…” Moriarty said to them in an aside. “But I didn’t think they would have one. It would’ve been mush even with our best preservation technique.”

“Then we came here for nothing…?”

“Not nothing. Come. Watch the storm pass with me. We’ll see if we get a kaiju brain tonight.”

_\--_

The sirens that stirred the two pilots of Excalibur Gold awake weren’t meant for them.

The scientists, who had tried their hardest to pinpoint the next location of the kaiju, were wrong. Hong Kong’s bolstered defenses wouldn’t be used that night.

Just off the coast of southern California, Ozymandias and Arash got the call.

It was three in the morning when they were jostled from their beds and quickly splashing their faces with water. A Kaiju had been detected from the breach, heading straight for California. It was moving at a phenomenal speed, too, so only their fastest Jaeger would work—Meteor Tentyris was prepped as soon as the command was given. As they suited up, Arash glanced towards Ozymandias.

“We should be careful, this wasn’t predicted—”

“Please,” Ozymandias was as confident as ever as they prepared for the drop. “We’re the best pilots on the coast. The moment you let that confidence slip, you let them win! Show them the might of men in a Jaeger, we’re the last stand of humanity itself!”

Arash quickly shook off any doubt. If Ozymandias was sunlight incarnate, Arash was like the moon, perfectly poised to reflect its light on humanity. The two braced themselves as the drop was ordered, clearly attuned to one another’s thoughts as the neural handshake commenced. As Salieri brought Meteor Tentyris to life at the command center, the two headed into the ocean. Rain fell, brewing a storm off the coast as they tried to get a lock on their target.

It was fast, fast approaching. Arash thought it first—this thing was made to swim. They were at a direct disadvantage, but it had never stopped them before.

“Ten miles—” Salieri warned.

“We got it.”

As soon as it emerged from the depths, Meteor Tentyris was ready with a blast from its arm, knocking it back, sending it flying. Ozymandias let out an uproarious laugh as Arash focused on the kaiju’s form, the two backing up and scanning for its location. Of course, kaiju just don’t go down as easily as they used to, Arash thought—one blast wouldn’t be enough. Sure enough, in the neon blood surrounding them, the beast leaped up again, charging Meteor Tentyris by pushing its back legs into the ocean floor and propelling itself forward.

The amount of force was phenomenal. In the dizzying shakedown, Arash and Ozymandias could overhear the radio cutting out as people screamed ‘Category 4! Category 4!’. Lights flickered and sparks flew as the whole jaeger shook, both of them straining to hold the kaiju’s face in place as they opened up the core of the jaeger to fire a blast powerful enough to level a building.

“Hold on--!” Salieri shouted, the sounds of furious typing audible in the background. “Excalibur Gold and Circuit Lion are on their way! You’ll have backup in the next half hour if you can just distract it and keep it from the coastline! Don’t engage!”

“We have to—” Ozymandias shouted back. “It’s goal is the coast, isn’t it?!”

“Just run! Lead it on a wild goose chase, do whatever you can to buy time! Do NOT ENGAGE!”

\--

Gilgamesh seemed more rushed than usual, getting into the cockpit of a jaeger, but Arthur could understand the hurry. A category four… the biggest one yet, named Unagi. They were deploying two jaegers at once, making a total of three to stop it. Two jaegers were usually more than enough, but it seemed like they weren’t taking risks. Arthur could see Edison and Tesla rushing to their own terminal to deploy, not even having time to argue on the way. There was a cold tenseness in the air that Arthur could feel off his copilot, and he knew it all too well; the fear that something terrible was coming, something they weren’t ready for.

They suited up and deployed, no argument, no soft reassurance. Just the determination to get there in time.

\--

Meteor Tentyris was extremely quick in motion, as one of the top Jaegers recently commissioned, it had no problem hurling punch after punch. Its strength, however, was in its core, where it earned the ‘meteor’ title. It had to be close enough to a Kaiju for it to work, but the laser shot from the core would tear through any kaiju like a comet burning through the atmosphere. The only problem was that the kaiju was fast, too. Swimming around them and looking for weak points, it was clear it had a mission: destroy the jaeger like it was some kind of pest and wreak havoc on the mainland.

Arash and Ozymandias had only disobeyed orders when it was clear the kaiju lost interest and started heading for the mainland. With its big, blunt head, it looked like it could crush anything in its path, and both of their minds thought the same thing in unison— _'we can’t let that happen’_. With five minutes before the cavalry arrived, Meteor Tentyris launched itself into one final assault. Their goal was simple—get it within blast range again and finish it off for good. They were _unbeaten_ , and they would not lose yet.

As the screeching sound of metal against metal rang through the air as the beast charged it, the blunt end of its head crashed into the core of the jaeger.

“Cannon offline. Cannon offline!”

Their main weapon now down, Ozymandias and Arash looked at each other, but before Arash could say anything, Ozymandias made the decision to try and grapple the monster. Do anything to keep it from reaching the—

Reaching… the?

It had happened before Ozymandias even registered it.

The Kaiju withdrew its arms and from its hand emerged sharp talons, and as if it knew the weak point to aim for, went straight for the hull.

He couldn’t feel his arm anymore, just the searing pain of where it once was. He quickly looked at Arash, who was screaming his name. Glass flew every which-way, the Jaeger came to a stop. At once, the claws ripped through the hull to the side, he could feel himself going slack, going weak. It wasn’t just his arm, but he couldn’t tell, right then, what it was. His torso? Maybe. His mind had already been stunned, and Arash had to struggle out of the cockpit to get Ozymandias down and drag him to a safer corner of the hull. Without anything to put pressure on the wound where his arm was ripped off, all Arash had was his hand. Ozymandias couldn’t hear anything, just the tinny sound ringing in his ear, growing louder as the lights grew brighter. He focused on Arash’s face, bloody and tearful, and thought in a delirious haze ‘I should tell him I love him, something quick’.

He opened his mouth and nothing could come out. Arash begged him to say nothing, to save his energy.

“I…”

Even the sun, as radiant as it is in the sky, must one day turn red and burst into nothingness.

The red on his armor complimented that perfectly as his eyes went dull and he stopped struggling to breathe.

\--

**20XX.**

_“Gilgamesh, this is Ozymandias.”_

_Already, they challenged one another with their gazes._

_Competition was never stronger between recruits. If not for their previous copilots they’d been assigned to, one would be hard-pressed to say these two weren’t drift compatible. They thought the same way, acted similar, and though Ozymandias regarded the people around him with more love, they both had the eyes of a ruler and the voice of a superior. They took no orders, they gave them as readily as if they were in charge, and they earned enough respect to follow through. Arash and Ozymandias were naturally complementary, while Gilgamesh and Ozymandias were direct competitors._

_But it was fun for Gilgamesh._

_It was famously true for Gilgamesh that for him to truly love someone, he had to fight them first. His scrapping with Enkidu on the playground growing up had turned into a tight friendship filled with mutual respect. Enkidu grew to appreciate the fact that Ozymandias meant that Gilgamesh had another friend, the kind he could really get along with, and confide in incase anything ever happened to them on the front lines._

_Gilgamesh knew this, and therefore treasured Ozymandias after their passing. He had Enkidu’s approval. They might have argued where they differed, but it was always with respect; something Gilgamesh didn’t have for just anyone._

_If Ozymandias didn’t have eyes for Nefertari and Arash, Gilgamesh might have inserted himself into his life a little more intimately, if only because he craved that connection with someone and Ozy was the most primed to give it, but three’s a crowd and four is excessive, so he always kept it to himself. Besides, it was more of an idea than a feeling. Something he thought he could force himself to feel if only to push away the empty gap that Enkidu had left in his life._

_He would never replace them, but to deny the loneliness in his own heart would be ridiculous._

\--

Arthur could tell, by the loss of radio and the shape of Meteor Tentyris when they arrived that they were too late, but Gilgamesh’s rage potently filled his mind and heart before any sorrow could set in. They leapt into the fray with absolutely zero hesitation. Excalibur Gold disregarded every order from then on out to mercilessly tear into Unagi. As Circuit Lion gave back-up, nothing got through to either of them. Arthur thought of Arash, Gilgamesh thought of Ozymandias as they used the blade jutting from Excalibur Gold’s arm to slice apart the kaiju from the wound the other jaeger had left in it. It went down with a bloodcurdling scream, but even they knew it was on its last legs from the first hit it had taken from Meteor Tentyris.

Arthur panted as Gilgamesh rammed the blade into it over and over, grieving and mourning the loss of one of his closest friends. It was long dead by the time he finished, reeling back as they stood up together, before the radio came on, coming from Meteor Tentyris.

“Arash?!” Arthur shouted.

“I’m… Ozymandias is…”

“…” Gilgamesh just listened, quietly.

“ _I didn’t protect him_ ,” his voice broke.

“Arash… Arash it’s not your fault, just wait until the rescue teams come—”

The noise was drowned out by static as Arash presumably let go of the button. Gilgamesh was stiff, staring straight forward. Arthur stood stock still, still connected to him in the drift. He could hear the sorrow inside of him clear as day, could feel it as though he felt it, though he didn’t need the extra help—it was always heartbreaking to lose a pilot, but Gilgamesh’s feelings were so strong, hidden beneath his exterior. He felt betrayed by Ozymandias leaving him so soon, as if he had the right to. When they promised one another to make it out. When he had a wife waiting for him back home.

Arthur let these thoughts flow through him, he didn’t let go of them and he didn’t push them away. He felt a tear roll down his cheek, and glancing at Gilgamesh, whose face was dry… he could only imagine that through their link, Gilgamesh kept his stoic mask on and forced out his tears through Arthur.

He would gladly bear that burden.

\--

_“This is Channel 6 news. Breaking news, Meteor Tentyris fell in battle this morning. Pilot Ramesses -------, otherwise known as Ozymandias, was killed fighting Category 4 Kaiju “Unagi” this morning. His copilot, Arash -----, survived the attack and is expected to recover—”_

‘Expected to recover.’

What a shameful badge to bear.

Arash sat up in the hospital bed, wondering if earlier was just a nightmare and right now was an extension of that, but the people surrounding him proved that it wasn’t. Gilgamesh sat beside him and Arthur stood at the wall behind him. Arthur thought to himself that this sight was familiar to him, from the opposite point of view. Hadn’t Brynhildr stood here before, with flowers in her arms? Words failed him, because he knew nothing would comfort someone in his position.

Arash said nothing as Gilgamesh watched him.

“What are you going to do?” He finally asked.

Arash looked at him tiredly. “I… I don’t know.”

“What would Ozymandias want you to do?”

“I can’t get back in a Jaeger…” Arash had cried all the tears he could muster for now, but even so, he felt his eyes sting. Just thinking of Ozymandias _not here in this world_ was too much to bear. “He… he called me a hero, but he was my sun.”

“… you don’t have to.” Gilgamesh said, quietly. Arthur looked at him with some surprise.

“…”

“It’s not for everyone. Not everyone can stand up again after falling so hard.”

“How did you do it…?”

“I had to. There was simply no other option. You have a choice, though.”

“… what will I tell his wife? I promised her I’d protect him.”

“That was your promise, so those will be your words and yours alone.” Gilgamesh said with finality. Arash seemed to appreciate the raw honesty. His eyes drifted from Gilgamesh to Arthur.

“What about you, Arthur? How did you deal with it?”

“…”

He wanted to say so badly ‘I didn’t’, but couldn’t bear to bring down his own sorrow when Arash had suffered so much. “It’s the same as Gilgamesh. I had to because I had no choice.”

“Why do I…?”

“Because that’s what Ozymandias would have wanted for you. To choose where you go from here. For Enkidu and Artoria, they would have wanted us to keep fighting.”

Without saying anything, Arthur nodded in agreement.

“He couldn’t say anything when he died…”

“Not everyone has a chance for last words.”

“I just wish I knew what he was thinking,” Arash clenched his fists, balling up the sheets in his hands. “I just wish—”

“You don’t have that luxury, but… you have all his memories. He _lives_ inside of you, just like our partners live in us.” Arthur spoke. “You can put together what he would have said in his last moments with that alone.”

For Arash, several memories passed through his mind. Days spent in sunlight and sheets and days spent fighting side by side, days where Ozymandias promised him that they’d be together after they won this war and days where news seemed grim and it felt like they were the only two standing against the storm coming on the horizon. He remembered everything of Ozymandias’s, things he treasured, things he hated, things he looked forward to more than anything. If there was anything inside of him that told him the truth, it was his smile when he looked at Arash, how tenderly he treated each memory of him, and how, if he had anything left to say to him at all, it would probably be to thank him for being his partner for so long.

The tears Arash had thought he’d gotten out suddenly came back, rolling down his cheeks in quiet realization. Arthur and Gilgamesh decided it was finally time to leave him be.

\--

“Do you think we gave him the right advice?” Arthur asked, quietly.

“Advice is meaningless in times like this. He’ll choose whatever his heart chooses when the time comes. It’s not what we say to him that’s important, it’s what Ozymandias would have wanted for him that will steer him.”

Arthur looked at Gilgamesh for a moment. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being so kind to him.”

“Don’t thank me for that. Even I know when to be merciful with someone. It doesn’t take a good pilot or a bad pilot to fall in battle. You just have to be unlucky _once_ , and anyone can do that.”

Arthur, more than anyone, understood what he meant. As the two walked back to the base in silence, Arthur found himself wanting to say something more. Something else that would strengthen their resolve after losing someone, but he only knew Ozymandias as well as he did through Gilgamesh’s memories.

“I promise, I—”

“Don’t promise me anything,” Gilgamesh said quietly. “Just keep fighting with me until it’s all over. Arash made a promise he has to answer for. Don’t do the same thing.”

Arthur made a soft ‘hm’ noise in understanding, cutting himself off. He was the kind of loyal person who wanted to promise that he wouldn’t let this happen to them, but Gilgamesh was right.

You only had to be unlucky once.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we kind of earn the start of our M rating here

He was not useless.

He was not a burden.

Gilgamesh could never afford to think of himself as those things. He was not weak, and his friends didn’t die around him for him to go on through life breaking down and thinking of himself as such. Yet, when faced with those facts, the two people he was closest to dying the exact same way, something in him was straining. His ego wouldn’t let him devalue himself, but his pride had been wounded. Realistically, the helicopters couldn’t have flown any faster to get them to Ozymandias in time and there was no blood on his hands, but over and over, he replayed the events in his mind. He was anything but helpless, but he still couldn’t save _another_ dear friend.

That… _messed_ with him.

In the showers just a few days after the incident, he stared into the water circling the drain, transfixed. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to attend the funeral. It was a sign of weakness on his part, Gilgamesh believed, though anyone would understand him not showing up. He still had a job to do at the base, and now that America was down yet another pilot team, no one could blame him for wanting to stick close to the base in case the attacks accelerated.

His brow furrowed, unable to move from his spot in the shower, blond hair clinging to the sides of his face. The people he could turn to in this world were growing fewer and fewer, even knowing he’d surrounded himself with people who put their lives on the line. Before he knew it, the only real friends he had left were Siduri and Arthur.

Well. One he confidently called a friend, the other he trusted with his life, and the former was the more important. He decided to seek her out.

Toweling off his hair and getting dressed in military-grade cargo pants and a plain white shirt, he swung the door open and sought her out. Predictably, she was at her desk, working hard in the absence of the scientists.

“Gil—” She looked up at him as soon as she was done typing. “I’m so sorry about Ozymandias—”

“He knew the risks,” Gil said as if that made any difference to his mourning. “What are you doing?”

“Sherlock is sending us research from abroad while they figure out how to target the next kaiju attack. It’s—”

“I’m more curious as to what’s up with you.”

“Oh…” She felt sheepish at that, not used to being asked about her personal life. “I’m… doing well, all things considered. Twelve-hour workdays, sure, but I don’t mind it. It’s invigorating to be able to help.”

Of course, she would bury herself in work to hide her grief. All of them did, it was practically a sickness. Arthur was working on repairing Excalibur Gold, hoping the sound of metal drills and welding would silence what was going on in his own head. He envied Arthur for that much; the being able to put himself to work to put off his own trauma, like it could be packaged and dealt with later, but Gilgamesh always faced his head-on, as if the suffering became his strength.

(Neither were healthy.)

He wanted to ask her for her time, but she was clearly busy. After some polite small-talk, he excused himself.

It was almost embarrassing that he couldn’t open up to anyone, but then again—the people who he could open up around had been taken from him. Once again, Arthur was the only person who knew all his secrets, the very worst of him and the very best. He hated the idea that he might have to rely on Arthur because relying on meant getting attached. How many times could he keep doing this? Keep losing someone? He grabbed some food from the cafeteria and had it put in a paper bag as a sort of peace offering, not that there was any bad blood between them.

As he made his way to the hangar, he spotted Arthur up on Excalibur Gold’s arm. He waited until Arthur was done welding a piece of metal back into place before calling up to him.

“Yes?” Arthur raised the metal safety helmet once he heard Gilgamesh through the grinding, shrieking sounds around him.

“Come on down.”

The last time Gil had done this, they went to the showers, but he was impatient this time. He let Arthur take off his protective gear and wash up before shoving the paper bag into his chest.

“What’s--?”

“You haven’t clocked out in eight hours. Go on, eat.”

“I’m not really…”

“You can’t neglect your body for the sake of sadness, Arthur. Eat.”

Seen through so easily, Arthur bitterly thought. As they found somewhere to sit, Arthur shrugged his shoulders, feeling the weight of the world on them.

“Gil… I’ve—”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got something to say.”

“What is it?”

“I knew Ozymandias too.”

“… and?”

“I mean—I knew him… before. Him and Arash. We go back, but we got distant when the war began.” Arthur sighed, opening his canteen to take a sip. “I never said anything because you two were so close, I didn’t want to seem like I was inserting myself into your—”

Gilgamesh gently flicked the back of his head.

“I knew through the drift, mongrel. Did you temporarily forget that we have no secrets?”

“… I guess, yeah. We just never talked about it.” In that case, it was really pointless to explain their history together. Their growing up in the same area before drifting to different parts of the Jaeger program, no pun intended.

“I know how you feel. You may not have known him as well as me, but we both had a history with him.”

They sat on one of the metal stairway platforms wrapping around the Jaeger, Arthur’s legs dangling over the edge safely between the balusters and Gil sitting on the steps. Every new death left Arthur numb, it renewed his will to fight but each blow was like another shot of Lidocaine in a different part of his body, and he couldn’t tell if his body was rejecting his ability to mourn as a way to manage the constant stress he was under, and when all of this was said and done, he’d collapse under the weight of all of it hitting him at once. The idea of it scared him, but not as much as it scared him now to feel so… empty.

“I think I should see a doctor,” He admitted, finally.

“I think that might be good for you.”

“You, too.”

“I’m handling it better than you.” Gilgamesh rebuked.

“I know what the inside of your mind is like, Gil. You keep your wounds raw so they still hurt, so you can let the pain inspire you to fight. If you do that, they’ll never close. You’ll live with it your entire life.”

“I’d rather live with the pain than forget for even a moment what was taken from me.” Gilgamesh spat bitterly.

“… I don’t know how to handle this any better than you do,” Arthur admitted. “So advice from me is useless, but I do know this: your pain isn’t what the people who loved you would want. Your pain is not your strength. Those people are your strength, Ozymandias now included.”

Arthur knew him scarily well, but it was to be expected. They practically shared one mind, now—just different personalities. Gilgamesh still didn’t know what to do about Arthur or Arthur’s respect for him, as far as he was concerned, what he felt for the man was… trust; implicit, but complicated. Gilgamesh didn’t want to like him, but he did, and he was usually very in control of that. He yearned for the days where he could flirt with this man and Arthur would dismiss him carelessly. Where his fascination with Arthur could be simple admiration and a resounding match for ‘his type’, but nothing more than that.

Arthur was… undeniably a sad person with a sad situation, but also smart and intense. He almost didn’t live in an apocalypse, just a world with troubles he was tasked to solve while Gilgamesh was very keenly aware of how dire their situation was. He wanted to push Arthur. Not off the stairs, he wanted to push him emotionally. He wanted to see the fire in those green eyes, the fury in his heart, he wanted to see him alive and living in the moment, but when every scheme Gilgamesh had would fall apart in the drift, what could he do?

They had a mental and emotional connection by drifting, but nothing physical.

It gave Gilgamesh an idea.

“Can we get back to your room?” Gilgamesh asked.

“Well… I don’t know what you want there, it’s—”

“Let’s just go.”

Arthur untangled his legs from the bars and stood up.

\--

“Sorry for the mess…”

Not that there was much to make a mess of in Arthur’s room. The sheets were untidy and his sink was a mess of military-issued soaps and shaving products, but Gilgamesh could hardly care about the disarray. He backed Arthur against the door and pinned him with his arm.

“Gil—what—”

Gil glowered down at him from the very slight edge his height gave him, even more so with his hair unusually slicked back. Arthur wasn’t sure if he was going to beat him up or…

“Arthur.” Gilgamesh’s voice was soft but stern.

“…?” Arthur stared back at him, confused.

“Did I ever tell you that you were my type?”

“No, but I already knew.” What was he getting at? They’d drifted recently, and he knew Gilgamesh felt absolutely nothing for him—

“We are linked in every single way but physically. Have you never been curious? What it’s like to sleep with your copilot?”

Arthur’s face burned, his eyes growing wide. “What?!”

“Even you must yearn for some kind of physical connection, with _anyone_. You have no one left…” Gilgamesh traced his collarbone, going lower until his finger hooked on his dog tags. “No one but me. And believe me, Arthur, I’m not suggesting this out of love or yearning I’ve managed to hide in the drift. I’m suggesting this because this is the kind of stress relief we _need_. The right endorphins, the right trigger in the mind. The more you isolate yourself in all ways, the worse off you’ll be in the Jaeger. If you wish to know me as a friend,” Gilgamesh whispered in his ear. “I suggest you start knowing my body, first.”

He wasn’t lying. He was seriously proposing casual sex as a way to get closer. Arthur wasn’t sure how to respond. He wasn’t that type of person to just casually give into seduction, but Gilgamesh’s proposal… was tempting. He couldn’t believe he was being _tempted_. He was lonely and miserable and yearned to get to know his copilot, but this could be a slippery slope. At the end of this, Arthur could catch feelings and Gilgamesh would return none of them, leaving him in a worse state than before. At the same time…

It was just so…

Gilgamesh was handsome, Arthur was willing, but something held him back. Something that told him this was a bad idea, but plenty of people have had bad ideas and great times while going along with them, so he was right back where he started.

Arthur leaned his head forward, slightly, and Gilgamesh took the initiative to kiss him. Against the iron door of Arthur’s room, where no one could watch, he pushed Arthur back against it and started figuring out the rest of the mystery of Arthur Pendragon. Curiously, though Arthur did, Gilgamesh did not close his eyes while tasting the depths of his mouth, as if he wasn’t even taking pleasure in kissing him, that it was just the right _motion_ to do.

They wouldn’t get very far. Arthur would push him back to the bed before shortly saying ‘I can’t, not yet, not _this_ ’ and Gilgamesh excused himself from his room. He’d gotten what he wanted, though. You lead a dehydrated man to water, and you’ll be hard-pressed to stop him from drinking after the first gulp.

He knew Arthur would come and find him before the week was over.

\--

“Abby?”

Abigail Williams was clutching her teddy bear, knocking on the dorm room door that Diarmuid took residence in. “Did you lose your father again?”

She shook her head. “Mm-mm. Marshal wants to see you.”

Diarmuid blinked. Unusual to send one of the few children on base to get him, but maybe her father got caught up with something and asked her to carry the message to its final destination. He took her by the hand and lead her back to her father before finding Romani Archaman and Merlin on his own. Saluting briefly, he asked what he was needed for. Repairs? Or…?

“We’re assigning you to the San Diego base.”

His heart sank, slightly. He was used to his companions here and would be sad to lose Arthur’s company, as well as others. “Do they need repairmen for Meteor Tentyris?”

“No, Diarmuid… they need pilots.”

He blinked. “No—no, I can’t get back into a Jaeger with Fionn.”

“We weren’t thinking of Fionn. There was another man you were drift compatible with, high scores. He recently lost a copilot and you would help us immensely if you considered joining up with him. Meteor Tentyris is going to undergo some major upgrades and changes. It will need a fresh set of pilots.”

Diarmuid didn’t know how to feel, being pushed back into a Jaeger where someone just died, but Meteor Tentyris was relatively new, making it one of the safer ones. “My copilot…?”

“One Cu Chulainn, from the Alaskan base,” Merlin said, passing Diarmuid his file. “His copilot didn’t die or anything, but she was injured badly. She won’t be able to set foot into a Jaeger again.”

Diarmuid read the file closely. A man with red tattoos across his chest and face, staring apathetically into the camera in the photo attached to the file. He seemed to remember Cu being much more lively back when they were tested together, serious in a fight, but friendly enough outside of it. He couldn’t see these two being the same person. He flipped through the file… ‘needs partner with restraint’ was highlighted, making Diarmuid worry about his sudden position.

“The two of you will be driven to San Diego and will be re-tested for drift compatibility, though I don’t think there will be any problems,” Romani said, turning his chair to face Diarmuid. “Are there any objections? It pains me that we’ve wasted your talents for so long on repairs.”

“None,” Diarmuid said, firmly. “If I can get in a Jaeger, I will. Being on the front lines is important to me.”

“Good. Then pack your personal effects and be outside at 4 PM.”

Diarmuid would do just that.

\--

Cu Chulainn hadn’t been this… huge before, he was pretty certain.

He was muscular and tall, his head reaching the top of the car they were in. His workout regimen must be something fierce, Diarmuid thought to himself as they sat side by side in the cramped backseat. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say to introduce himself just yet, though he certainly wanted to try.

“Cu…?”

“Mm?”

“It’s been a long time. How have you been?”

“Fighting the front lines in an apocalypse.” He responded, curtly, as if that should answer it for him.

“Ah. Are you looking forward to a new base?”

“Same as the last one.”

Gods above, give him something to work with! “Do you think we’ll still be drift compatible?”

Cu looked his way, sizing him up.

“Hm.”

That was all the answers Diarmuid was going to get out of him, wasn’t it… he was definitely cheerier before, but he supposed their situation caused changes in personality. Plus, he’d read in his file that he’d suffered some kind of neural damage in the drift. Nothing that impacted him physically, but it had altered his personality somewhat. He was still completely cognizant and aware, he was just a more subdued person, now. And—as the file mentioned—a little more bloodthirsty.

As one could imagine, San Diego didn’t receive their replacement pilots with a celebration.

They were still mourning the loss of someone who had protected their coasts. Replacements were necessary, but an unfortunate reminder that their other pilots were gone. They were received by Salieri, a grim man who didn’t want the task of having to inform them where to go and what they should be doing, but the first thing Cu did was tap Diarmuid’s shoulder and pointed him to the sparring room.

“Come on. Let’s find out now.”

\--

Cu seriously wasted no time.

Shrugging off the heavy green jacket every recruit in the PPDC had, he picked up two of the jo staffs, tossing one to Diarmuid, who wielded it as effortlessly as a lance. Another staff member, Shiki, stood by to take notes on their movements.

“Begin.”

Cu was on the offense almost immediately, sweeping Diarmuid off his feet within twenty seconds. He’d been able to block the assault for the most part, but Cu had caught him off guard in the last second. He loomed over him, without offering a hand to help him up.

“Again.”

This time, thirty seconds. The next, forty seconds. Finally, a whole minute. They were evenly matched in terms of technique, but Cu’s brute force had nearly knocked the jo staff out of Diarmuid’s hands several times. He was _incredibly_ strong. More than he had prepared for. Finally, Cu said ‘enough.’

“We’re compatible. You felt it, right?”

Diarmuid got the impression that Cu knocked all other candidates flat in seconds. Diarmuid had practiced this kind of fighting personally, so that was the only reason he held any chance at all.

“Yeah… yeah, I did.”

Cu laid his staff back against the wall. “We’re done here, then.”

Diarmuid wanted to stop him, to find something else out about his copilot, but he settled for taking a towel and dabbing the sweat off of his cheek.

His new copilot was something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayy follow me on http://twitter.com/gilthurst if you want!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN A WHILE, HUH

It was another one of her nightmares, again.

Brynhildr woke up shaking, clutching her blanket to her chest in the dimly-lit apartment bedroom. She and Sigurd had been doing this for so long that they’d earned the privilege to live slightly off base, somewhere more comfortable, but never too far out of arm’s reach in case an emergency happened. It was always the same dream. Watching Sigurd get ripped to shreds during a fight. Nothing she could do. The dreams in which she also died were inconsequential to the vision of seeing him die.

The only light in the room was their digital clock, and she could hear Sigurd fumble for his glasses on the nightstand as he sat up and put them on. “Are you okay, Bryn?”

“I’m…” She already felt guilty for waking him up, but they were so sensitive and attuned to one another that it never failed to happen. The drift did things to your mind, sometimes she wondered if they were ever truly unlinked from each other. He knew all about her nightmares, he saw them every time they got into their Jaeger. Therefore, all he could do was rub her shoulder and whisper that he was right here and he wasn’t going _anywhere_.

“Every day I hear the alarms, I feel like I’m living my worst nightmare,” She confessed. “I know we’re strong enough. We’ve held the coast for so many years. I just… wouldn’t be able to go on without you.”

Sigurd had heard this line from her a thousand times over, and it broke his heart every time to hear it. He felt the same way, of course, but he wanted her to have the strength to go on if something indeed happened to him. “Then I will always fight hard enough for the both of us,” He reassured her. “I’ll always make sure we get back home. You can’t get into a Jaeger without getting some rest, Bryn. So, please—”

She nodded, numbly, pulling him closer as he rolled over onto his side to hold her through the rest of the night. She nestled cozily into his chest and let his pajama shirt blot out the tears from her eyes. As long as the alarms weren’t going off, she had Sigurd. She was fine. Everything… would be fine, until they did.

\--

They would barely have time to prepare.

Not Brynhildr and Sigurd, who were safely located on the Russian front; the breach reported another Category 3 headed for the American coastline not long after they had woken up. They were usually more spread out, almost aimless, leaving every coast in the Pacific vulnerable and needing their own bases. They had predicted the next attack would hit Australia, according to some data Sherlock and Moriarty had sent over. They were wrong.

The next attack was headed for San Francisco.

Arthur wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready for the drift, he wasn’t ready to be inside Gilgamesh’s mind again, but he had to. He said nothing as they were suited up, as they were briefed on the next Kaiju’s name—“Calamity”—and only glanced in Gilgamesh’s direction once or twice.

Perhaps because he was dreading what came next. He knew it was coming, and Gilgamesh probably knew too, he thought.

Their suits of armor had fresh paint, hiding the scratches earned from rough battles. Gilgamesh’s was black and gold, Arthur’s black and blue. Matching, but only barely. On any other day, the refreshing change of pace might have encouraged Arthur, but when the pilot-to-pilot protocol was engaged, he got exactly what he expected.

“Drift failed,” The monotonous robotic voice said gently.

Siduri was surprised—they had never, not once, failed a drift. “It’s showing me that the connection halts on Arthur’s end—”

“Get it _together_ ,” Gilgamesh snapped at him. Arthur nodded, numbly. The drift began anew.

“Drift failed.”

It was all those thoughts, racing in his head, stuff he didn’t want Gilgamesh seeing for the first time. You couldn’t be shy in a Jaeger, and he wasn’t _shy_. He cleared his mind, knowing that whatever they did, Gilgamesh would be fucking pissed with him if they weren’t deployed, deciding to become vulnerable and let his secrets spill.

One more time.

“Pilot-to-pilot protocol, complete.”

Arthur breathed a sigh of relief, after getting the same flash of memories he usually did from Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh looked at him for but a moment before staring forward.

“Never thought you considered my request so deeply,” He sounded _smug_ about it.

“Gilgamesh…” Siduri warned, not wanting the connection to become unstable again.

“It’s fine! It’s fine. He knows now, anyway,” Arthur said, despite Siduri having no clue what he was talking about.

“Okay. Calamity is 40 miles off the coastline, but it’s a swimmer. It’s approaching fast… we’re going to evacuate the city, just try and hold it until back up arrives.”

“Back up?” Arthur asked. “You think that we’ll need back up?”

“New protocol. We’re going to try and get Circuit Lion to run with you once you’re out there.”

“Let’s get on with it,” Gilgamesh coldly said, letting go of the comm button. “Now.”

Excalibur Gold marched into the cold depths of the ocean, pressing forward into the evening. Even through the Jaeger’s loud, mechanical whirr, they could hear the alarm of sirens behind them, filling them with a combination of courage and a primal dread that sirens tended to give. They were the city’s sole protectors for now, and they were unbeaten together. They could finish this in minutes, or they could finish this dead.

“We need to bait it above the ocean,” Arthur said. “We’re blind if it chooses to swim.”

“Right.”

The only thing they didn’t anticipate was how fast it was. When the radio mentioned how quickly it approached, they didn’t expect to brace for a hit and be knocked back so fully that it took them off their feet. When they couldn’t anchor themselves to the ground, that was when Arthur realized—

“This is what it’s aiming for! It wants to take us to land!”

As much as they tried digging the heels of the Jaeger into the ocean floor, it wouldn’t work. Something was stronger about this Kaiju—together, they doubted it was a Category 3 at all. Suddenly, it dug its feet into the ground and launched the Jaeger out of the water, sending it flying onto the coast. This was bad—They’d never had to fight on land before, and casualties were certain. As the radio screamed at them to stand back, to drive it back into the ocean, Calamity used the beach as leverage to drive them into the city.

Car sirens and broken glass all around them. They were back to back with a skyscraper, practically buried within it. Clenching its fist, Excalibur Gold stood up, readying its plasma cannon and sword. Killing it quickly was the only way out of this. Circuit Lion was having “some issues getting online”, so they were on their own for now.

The thick, blunt head of the kaiju was deadly, though—effectively a battering ram on legs, it took several hits before even slowing down, and that’s when it opened its jaw—rows upon rows of jagged teeth, splitting its head open, revealing a chemical blue sac within its mouth. Excalibur Gold backed up. Calamity moved forward.

It happened so fast, Arthur didn’t know what to think. It used its head to knock them into another skyscraper, but the plasma cannon shot off the Kaiju’s arm. That’s when it opened its mouth and shrieked, sending acid flying. Immediately, the core of their Jaeger was shot. As Excalibur Gold buckled, knocking them back _hard_ , Arthur looked over at Gilgamesh.

“Gil--? Gil?!”

He was unresponsive. Something from the shock must have done it. Arthur panicked. The kaiju was reeling from its arm, but he couldn’t just leave Gil here. He knew what Kaiju did to Jaegers even when they were unresponsive. He had to do something. Something. Something fast. Disengaging from the cockpit, he opened the emergency hatch to find two flare guns and immediately got out of Excalibur Gold. He couldn’t lose another partner, not again, even if he died too—he just couldn’t bear it, not even if it was Gilgamesh, who was so confusing but so broken, just like him, who didn’t deserve to die and lose the last piece of himself he promised to preserve.

He climbed down the Jaeger’s arm as it trembled beneath his grip, slipping and sliding down, fear and adrenaline driving him. He had to get the kaiju away from the Jaeger, take its attention off Gil. Gritting his teeth, he made it just barely to the ground and began running before aiming and firing the first flare gun towards its mouth.

It exploded like fireworks within the Kaiju, drawing its attention and fury towards the lone person standing in the middle of the street. Arthur swallowed hard, knowing this was the end of the line, but… Gilgamesh was just as strong as him, if not stronger. He could survive, find another partner, live, and if he ever missed Arthur? He had a carbon copy somewhere in his memories.

He was just sorry he had to bear the burden of carrying four people in his mind as he fired off the second flare gun, this time aiming for its eye as Calamity crashed forward, screaming in the same rage and pain as a wounded animal. He closed his eyes, ready for the impact, the hit that would knock him out from here to eternity.

It never came.

The kaiju was being gripped by another jaeger—Circuit Lion. Finally, they must have cooperated. Arthur was nothing more than an ant on the street compared to the jaeger and kaiju, but he realized what he had to do. He had to get Gilgamesh out of there.

As the brawl began anew, Arthur climbed back up into Excalibur Gold, surprised to see Gilgamesh awake.

“Mongrel, what were you thinking?!” Gilgamesh was doing everything he could to get Excalibur Gold back online, but nothing was working. The wiring had essentially been melted, rendering them useless. “Using a flare gun?! You would have been—”

Arthur embraced him.

“I couldn’t…”

Gilgamesh, surprisingly, said nothing as Arthur spoke.

“Not again. I couldn’t… lose a copilot again. Never again.”

Something in the heaving shudder of Arthur’s breath and the memory, viscerally taking him back to _Enkidu_ halted every angry instinct within Gilgamesh’s body. The only reason he was angry in the first place was that if Arthur had been killed, he would have had this same speech with someone else. About weakness, about strength, and about not being able to tolerate the pain of someone dying who you knew so intimately that there were no secrets. Instead of pushing him off, he wrapped his arms around Arthur, his eyes squeezed tight.

He understood.

\--

Circuit Lion disposed of Calamity quickly, it losing an arm had made it easy work. Rescue teams brought Arthur and Gil back, and Excalibur Gold was brought in for emergency repairs.

Gil was checked over for a concussion, something that would immediately disqualify him from the Jaeger program, making the entire doctor’s visit tense as Arthur listened in. He was fine, it turned out—a bump on the head that jostled his mind a bit too much. He was lucky, so much more so than many colleagues.

They were encouraged to stay within the medical wing after they got their stitches and were bandaged up, but Arthur and Gil found themselves wandering away from the prying eyes of others. It was almost unspoken as they closed the door behind them to Gil’s room.

Adrenaline, guilt, fear, and the need to be close pushed them together. Arthur couldn’t keep his hands off of him anymore. He knew it wasn’t love, it was desperation and relief that the other was okay that it had to be repaid intimately. Gil had finally torn down one of the walls he built keeping other people out and Arthur stepped into it so quickly that Gil had no time to push him out again. Not only that, but Arthur had lost all sense of regret for going into this—he _needed_ to be close with Gilgamesh, it was no longer a matter of ‘want’ or trying to make the right endorphins.

They tore at each other’s shirts, mindful of each other’s wounds, and collapsed together onto the flimsy white military-grade mattress. Gilgamesh was surprised to find him a good kisser, Arthur surprised to find Gilgamesh’s touch surprisingly tender. They warmed one another up with their bodies, Gilgamesh needily dragging him down each time Arthur came up for air.

Gilgamesh, if he were given the chance to describe it, would have called it nothing more than a connection—they were extensions of one another, holding bits and pieces of each other together. He wouldn’t call it love. It was something both deeper and less intimate than that at the same time. It was something only Jaeger copilots could have, knowing one another better than they knew themselves. If anyone could see into another person’s mind and share it as their own, they would get it.

That’s why there was no awkwardness to their motions, no unfamiliarity—they knew each other better than a couple married for 50 years ever could, and if you knew someone that well, how can you not yearn for them when you nearly lose them? Not want to give them the same kind of pleasure that they could for you?

They were kintsugi made from two different pots, and whether they knew it or not, they had formed something with one another that helped fix each other. They might have never had this without a war forcing them together, but as Gilgamesh stared up into Arthur’s misty green eyes, he realized there was more to Arthur than just being a “broken prince” or a “hero on a downward spiral”. He was a human being, fully realized, and bearing the weight of the world, and he saw Gil the exact same way.

It still wasn’t love, but it was something. Neediness, maybe.

As Gilgamesh sighed and panted and let Arthur take him to new heights, the chemical reaction between them seemed to work exactly as Gilgamesh suggested before. It relaxed them, help them forget the world for a moment, and it gave them a reason to keep going: to be able to do it again.

\--

Moriarty had been on the phone with his daughter for a while, so Sherlock decided to take certain matters into his own hands.

Opening his work laptop and doing the math on his own, he realized that the Kaiju event that took place in San Francisco was unprecedented—what were they doing attacking the American coastline so many times? He had a theory… they must have known where Da Vinci worked. Were they trying to find her? Eliminate her from giving more intel? That made the situation direr. They had to drift with a brain again to get their full plan, but the information shared was a two-way street.

“It leaves us with this,” He explained to her, Moriarty only half listening in. “We either attack them with a guessing plan to leave them in the dark, or we drift again—with a live brain, this time—and attack as soon as we have the information we need. If we fail either time, it might as well be humanity’s neck on the line.”

“So you’re saying, we have two suicidal options and we don’t know which one we can possibly survive?” Da Vinci asked, bringing a cup of tea to her lips.

“Correct.”

“My, if humanity knew it was down to that…” She mused. “Still, I feel like this is my fault. I did the drifting.”

“Nonsense. If you hadn’t, we would have only had one suicidal option. Now we have two, with the luxury of choosing. My dear, the only problem is…”

“Yes?”

“You’ll have to be bait,” Sherlock said, too cheerfully for Da Vinci to be pleased with.

“You’re so cruel, Holmes. Is it really going to take that much?”

“Of course. Have I ever been wrong?”

“You’ve been deliberately misleading at times…”

“All in pursuit of the truth, I assure you. I know an expert on Kaiju… a bit of an alien fanatic. Her name is Helena. I’ll get in touch with her.”

Da Vinci nodded, waving him off. She checked her phone to see if Romani had called her back yet, to report on the pilots’ conditions. So far, he’d said nothing. She figured he was fine, that Merlin would have texted if anything had gone wrong, but she still worried. San Francisco was directly under attack after all. If she were to lose him…

… no. The military would have reported something. All of a sudden, her phone buzzed.

“Romani?” She asked, hopefully.

“It’s chaos here!” He exclaimed, the noise in the background as proof of his claim. “When will you be back? We need our top scientists!”

“It might be safer for me to stay here while Sherlock executes his plan…”

“Still--!” He sighed. “Everything was easier with you around. It seems everything has fallen on me and Merlin’s shoulders.”

“Hold your head high, Romani. I think the end is in sight.”

“Really? What did Sherlock say?”

“I’m afraid if I ruined the surprise, he’d be mad with me.”

“We’re kind of past the point of keeping secrets!”

Da Vinci laughed. “I’ll send a report. Happy?”

“… yes.”

They exchanged a few more pleasantries before hanging up. Da Vinci returned to her tea. Geniuses were necessary for solving the crisis of the world ending, but she hadn’t expected to be so in demand. Still… even someone as smart as her had her doubts, but there would be time for those once they saved the world.

She just hoped it would be soon.


End file.
